100 books like The Lycian Shore

Martha Gellhorn’s blend of reportage and imagination ensnared me when I was barely out of my teens, and her preferred form has come of age in my working life.

Not only do I think Gellhorn is a marvellous writer – at her best, one of the best – but I also identify with Gellhorn the woman. "The open road," she wrote, was "my first, oldest and strongest love." She lived from 1908 to 1998 and was writing the fighting for six decades, and although each conflict was different, her message remained the same: ‘There is neither victory nor defeat; there is only catastrophe." 

I lived in Lagos for four years in the early ‘90s and have struggled ever since to describe the strange energy and appeal of this troubled, oft-maligned country.

Noo, a British-raised Nigerian, takes us to 12 Nigerian locations in a quest to understand her roots. Her childhood memories of visits to the homeland weren’t great, and she’s highly attuned to the widespread corruption that afflicts almost every aspect of Nigerian life.

Still, she travels with an open mind, asking questions, seeking mini-adventures, and falling in love-and-exasperation with the loud, outspoken, resilient residents of Africa’s most-populated country.

Her lively account, packed with nuggets of history, culture, and one-of-a-kind encounters and conversations, brought me back to a country that stole my heart when I least expected it.  Such a treat!

Dervla Murphy (1931-2022) was queen of the road when I started out. I learnt a lot from her.

Visiting Rwanda is probably my top pick among her many travelogues but her best book by far, in my opinion, is the autobiographical Wheels within Wheels. "I had been brought up to understand," Murphy writes, "that material possessions and physical comfort should never be confused with success, achievement and security."

I had been brought up to understand the opposite, and this book showed me, as I tackled a travel memoir of my own, that like Murphy I must take those crucial lessons as a starting point. 

I picked this because it showed me – and still does – that the most foreign journey is within, and that when the body stops travelling, the spirit takes over the trek.

Brennan is a fabulous writer – at her best, among the best – and in her head (she wore a beehive that according to a colleague at The New Yorker was taller than she was) she is travelling all the time.

She ought to be better known. 

When his mother disappears, ten-year-old Enaiatollah Akbari embarks on what would end up being a five-year journey that would take him from Afghanistan, through Iran, Greece, and Turkey, and eventually to Italy where he would meet and be befriended by the family of the book’s author, Fabio Geda. 

This is a novelisation of a true story – one that beggars belief – as young Enaiatollah works dangerous jobs and has to deal with unscrupulous people-traffickers as well as making perilous crossings across several borders. This is a story, nevertheless, of hope and so I feel it is something that will inspire as well as inform, and yes, entertain.

I bought Jeremy Bowen’s book by chance as I searched for books about the Middle East. I wanted something different from the traditional (and sometimes a bit difficult to read) academic nonfiction book. This book appealed to me because it was written in a journalistic style and because it was as much a book about recent history as one about Bowen’s own travels and encounters in the Middle East. Well, I was not disappointed.

I really enjoyed reading Bowen’s recollections of his time in the Middle East and critical reflections on great powers’ involvement there. That is a book I felt gave a good sense of how the West has mismanaged its policies in the region during the past fifty years. 

Kooshyar Karimi wrote this stunning memoir so beautifully it blew me away. Now a Sydney-based doctor and writer, he grew up as a Jew in Muslim Iran, hiding his origins from a brutal regime, always with a humorous eye. 

It is such a powerful story of survival, torture, and spying, plus forced deceptions and betrayal of others for helping desperate female rape victims. The struggle for redemption and eventual escape make his journey an unforgettable one.  

It is safe to say that this book was like a holy book to me when I was doing my MSc and during my early PhD years.

Martin van Bruinessen is a scholar that everyone who has an interest in Kurdish studies should be familiar with, and this book, which is a collection of his earlier articles, is a good introduction to get acquainted with Kurds and their history.

Even though the articles in this book date back to the 1980s and to the 1990s, it is a classic book for those who want to familiarise themselves with Kurds.

The articles here are not only about Kurds of Turkey but also those of Iran and Iraq. 

This scholarly book accompanied the enlightening exhibition of the same name at the MET 2013-2014. The way we learn how trade in textiles united the world is fascinating. One revelation for me was discovering that the first non-noble wealth was generated in the 18th century through textile trade.

This is a book about deep listening. It follows two childhood friends – a journalist and a former American soldier – on a kind of road trip through Turkey, Syria and Iraq in the close aftermath of the U.S. war there.

We watch them wrestle over the meaning of the conflict and their places in it. It’s reportage – the author is a third friend, following along, chronicling their conversation and laying out their arguments, blind spots and occasionally questionable reasoning as they try and deal with something almost too big and complicated to get a handle on.

The characters are not generals, or presidents, or militia leaders, they are just two old friends, trying to reckon with a war on a very human scale. Also the watercolored art is gorgeous.