Read Your Way Through New Orleans
New Orleans is a thriving hub for festivals, music and Creole cuisine. Here, the novelist Maurice Carlos Ruffin shares books that capture its many cultural influences.
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New Orleans is a thriving hub for festivals, music and Creole cuisine. Here, the novelist Maurice Carlos Ruffin shares books that capture its many cultural influences.
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Montreal is a city as appealing for its beauty as for its shadows. Here, the novelist Mona Awad recommends books that are “both dreamy and uncompromising.”
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Bus stations. Traffic stops. Beaches. There’s no telling where you’ll find the next story in Accra, Ghana’s capital. Peace Adzo Medie shares some of her favorites.
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The Bay Area has had many lives. The Oakland novelist Leila Mottley shares books that paint a picture of the city that lives and breathes today.
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Like many Nigerians, the novelist Stephen Buoro has been deeply influenced by the exquisite bedlam of Lagos, a megacity of extremes. Here, he defines the books that make sense of the chaos.
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Utah is a place of paradoxes, full of terrible beauty and complicated history. The writer Terry Tempest Williams recommends books to help you explore the state’s many facets.
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Like many who call Madrid home, Elena Medel was born elsewhere, but forged her identity in the Spanish capital. Here, she recommends books about this city that “refuses to be reduced to an ideal.”
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Lima is a city of contrasts and contradictions — gray and tropical, dense and isolated. Augusto Higa Oshiro, one of its writers, recommended books and authors that have captured its complexity.
By Augusto Higa Oshiro and
Read Your Way Through Missoula
Montana calls to storytellers: The cold clear waters of its rivers have carried the voices of its inhabitants from time immemorial, says Debra Magpie Earling, one of its writers. Here, she recommends her favorites.
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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.
By Han Kang and translated by Jasmine Jeemin Lee
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.”
By Barbara Kingsolver
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.
By Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Reading and writing are deeply valued in Maine. The novelist Lily King recommends fiction, nature writing, memoirs, children’s books and inspiration for writers.
By Lily King
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.
By Itamar Vieira Junior and translated by Johnny Lorenz
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.
By Luis Alberto Urrea
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.
By Héctor Tobar
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.
By Abraham Verghese
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.
By Jonathan Escoffery
Brazil’s ultra urban megacity overwhelms the landscape and the imagination. Paulo Scott recommends books that peel back its layers.
By Paulo Scott
Paul Theroux, the quintessential travel writer, has also enshrined his Massachusetts roots in his writing. Here are his recommendations for those who come to visit.
By Paul Theroux
Hiromi Kawakami, one of Japan’s most popular contemporary novelists, travels with books that help her immerse herself in her destination. Here, she suggests reading for those coming to her hometown, Tokyo.
By Hiromi Kawakami and translated by Allison Markin Powell
Edinburgh calls to readers, its pearl-grey skies urging them to curl up with a book. Maggie O’Farrell, the author of “Hamnet,” suggests reading that best reflects her city.
By Maggie O’Farrell
“No one sound speaks for all” Jamaicans, the novelist Marlon James says. Here are the books he recommends for readers who want to see the island’s many facets.
By Marlon James
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Tangier’s many facets have long inspired writers. Here, the Moroccan-born novelist Laila Lalami introduces readers to the books and writers that, to her, best capture the city.
By Laila Lalami
Virtuosity and creativity with language are “everyone’s birthright” in the Irish capital, says Tana French, an award-winning mystery writer who has made it her home.
By Tana French
Istanbul is unfathomable: old and new, real and surreal, melancholic and absurd. Elif Shafak, one of its foremost novelists, reveals its secrets.
By Elif Shafak
Bernardine Evaristo, whose “Girl, Woman, Other” won the Booker Prize, invites readers into London, a city whose rich literary landscape is “for everyone, not just the privileged few.”
By Bernardine Evaristo
Igiaba Scego, an author born in Rome to Somali parents, recommends books that draw readers through the rich layers that make up her hometown.
By Igiaba Scego
Pajtim Statovci shares his love of Finnish literature and the books that helped him, a child of immigrants, to find his voice and grow from reader to award-winning writer.
By Pajtim Statovci
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