Travel books

This month’s bookshelf is judging its neighbour.

Uncover the ripples two lakes leave in a lifetime in this month’s top read

The old saying goes ‘we have more in common than which divides us’. Well, some countries did not get that memo. This month sees two travel titles exploring regions largely through the bitter history that has torn neighbours asunder.

Kapka Kassabova’s follow up to her plauditladen Border, To The Lake is another study of people living on complicated boundaries. She follows her family history back to lakes Ohrid and Prespa, sitting on the crossroads of Albania, Macedonia and Greece, where the people are still counting the cost of the centuries of war. With the benefit of being blood – “Whose are you?” she’s often asked – Kassabova is able to turn generations of vast political and social upheaval into an intimate portrait of loss.

History and politics are at the heart of Three Tigers, One Mountain, with Michael Booth cannily navigating the endless enmity between China, Korea and Japan – with a side trip to Taiwan. As he pieces together an investigation of national grievance, he’s baffled by the reserves of resentment he encounters, a self-defeating spoke in the wheels of progress.

What the books share is an understanding of not just the complex history – and there’s a lot of history here – of these grudges, but also how they’ve gone on to become part of the national character, with neighbours defining themselves by who they are not. So that old saying may be true then, but unfortunately it’s just as often that what divides us is also what we have in common. Tom Hawker

If we want a more peaceful world, we must learn peace ourselves. It is the hardest thing. Kapka Kassabova

To The Lake Kapka Kassabova Granta, £15

Three Tigers, One Mountain Michael Booth Jonathan Cape, £15