Read Your Way Around the World

Han Kang grew up in Seoul, a city that embraces “thousands of years of turbulence.” She recommends reading that draws from the various eras that have made up her hometown.

Barbara Kingsolver, whose Pulitzer-winning “Demon Copperhead” offered a variegated portrait of the region, guides readers through a literary landscape “as bracing and complex as a tumbling mountain creek.”

Hanoi, long a city of storytellers, has been devastated and reborn time and time again. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai guides readers through the literature that has played a part in that renewal.

Reading and writing are deeply valued in Maine. The novelist Lily King recommends fiction, nature writing, memoirs, children’s books and inspiration for writers.

The writer Itamar Vieira Junior says that to “feel the intensity of life on the streets of Salvador” in Bahia, Brazil, a reader must start with Jorge Amado.

The poet and novelist Luis Alberto Urrea thinks the borderlands are the most interesting book in the world, being rewritten every day. These are his recommendations.

Héctor Tobar is a son of Los Angeles, a city of “perpetual cultural mixing.” Here, he guides readers through the books and writers that cut through the city’s layers.

A strip of lush land at the tip of India where spices grow wild, Kerala has long drawn the gaze of outsiders. Here’s Abraham Verghese’s guide to its literature, which nods at these influences but is very much its own.

To love Miami is to accept that it is a city in flux. Jonathan Escoffery, one of its writers, recommends books that help shape the Florida metropolis.

Brazil’s ultra urban megacity overwhelms the landscape and the imagination. Paulo Scott recommends books that peel back its layers.