Most of us will only be able to visit a very small number of
places in our lifetimes. The demands of
work and childcare, combined with financial and temporal limitations can be
daunting. This is one of the main
reasons I enjoy reading history books.
The ability to experience other times and places without leaving home
has always been one of the best reasons to read books anyway, right? I tend to like books aimed at a popular
audience. I don’t really need laborious
source citations or a detailed description of the extant literature on a
particular topic. I just want to know
what happened. Right now I’m reading a
book about Operation Mincemeat, a really interesting deception operation
undertaken by the Brits during WW2.
Other examples of this genre I have enjoyed include:
-The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk
-Trespassers on the Roof of the World (also Hopkirk. Spoiler alert - Tibetans are not gentle
pacifists.)
-The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang (depressing but good)
Semi-historical fiction is also good for
faux-travelling. Everything I know about
the history of India and Pakistan (which isn’t much) comes from reading Salman
Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. The
Poisonwood Bible is another good book, set in Africa, that gives you the
impression of having visited a place you may never see in real life. For better or worse, some of these books have
come to embody certain places and times for me.
The Sun Also Rises = Spain. A Year
in Provence = well, Provence. Silence
= 17th century Japan. My Name is Red = Ottomans. Snow = modern-day Turkey. The list goes on and on.
The works of Graham Greene, probably one of my favorite
authors and one I’m sure I’ll mention frequently on this blog, are so notorious
for this effect that his books’ settings are known collectively as Greeneland.
Here’s a summary of some of my favorites:
The Comedians – Haiti
Our Man in Havana – Cuba, of course
The Heart of the Matter – Sierra Leone
The Honorary Consul – Argentina
Brighton Rock – Brighton, England
The Power and the Glory – Mexico
The Third Man – Vienna
The Quiet American - Vietnam
No comments:
Post a Comment