There are plenty of books on the “great American road trip”;
there are not so many as deliciously told as this, however. In 1947
the French writer spent four months travelling by car, Greyhound
and train between New
York and LA
– and back again – tucking into the states’ diverse customs and
cultures en route. She encounters
Chicago‘s underworld of morphine addicts, gambles in Reno and
smokes her first joint at the Plaza Hotel.

Subtitled “an illustrated all-girl road novel thing”, this
offbeat, graphic tale of Tomato Rodriguez’s sea-to-sea motorcycle
journey is just the ticket for those who just can’t seem to get
properly stuck into a book for one reason or another. Written in
reaction to the typical “white man’s road trip”, this story is a
wild, raunchy ride. Think Alice in Wonderland meets Easy Rider.
Buckle up.

Around the world in 80 days? Yawn. Less than two decades after
Jules Verne’s fiction became a bestseller, 24-year-old journalist
Elizabeth Jane Cochrane (under the pseudonym Nellie Bly) chronicled
her round-world trip for a New
York tabloid. It’s not a road trip in the “road” sense – she
travels through England, Amiens, Brindisi, Penang, Japan and more
via rail and steamship – but we’re taken with the fact that she
travelled with just a few changes of underwear, toiletries and a
bag of cash tied around her neck. Her souvenir? A monkey.

Roads are more than ways to get from A to B; they can be tools
of connection, unity, hope and fear. Following six trucks on six
different byways – rare mahogany being transported across the
Andes, East African truckers linked to the spread of AIDS, those
crossing West Bank checkpoints and others on Lagos’ congested
streets – this book reflects on how roads shape our physical and
social landscape.

It’s 2011 and tensions are high between the British and Iranian
governments when travel writer Pryce finds a note left on her
motorcycle outside the Iranian Embassy in London.
“WE ARE NOT TERRORISTS! Please come to my city, Shiraz.” So,
against official warnings, she does. On a 5,000km solo ride across
the country, she meets carpet sellers, war veterans, housewives and
doctors who are full of energy and hope in the face of
oppression.

Most road-trip novels centre around soul searching or escapism
in one form or another. This is a bit different. Think of it as
road-trip-meets-eco-thriller written more than half a century
before eco thrillers were a thing. When a virus kills a species of
grass in Asia and Europe, and the US and
Australia close their borders, an engineer and his family drive
across Britain in chaos, trying not to starve along the way.

Translated from Portuguese, this story of queer love on the run
follows friends Julia and Cora who have fallen out, reunite for a
long-planned road trip through
Brazil, and emerge with something a little more than
friendship. It’s a short but moving read, and one for which Granta
named Bensimon one of
Brazil‘s best young novelists.

This is a portrait of a country in the grip of racism and
demons. A young African-American army veteran travels across the
Jim Crow-era US – from Chicago
to New England – searching for his missing father. Think of it as a
sci-fi, pulp-esque take on Get Out. One that’s so thrilling, in
fact, that it’s about to be released (on 16 August) as a series on
HBO.

In the days before mobile phones and internet, support teams and
social media, Ted Simon embarked on a four-year, 100,000km journey
from London,
crossing 54 countries around the world, passing through prisons,
war, natural disasters and revolutions en route. He was treated as
a spy, welcomed as a stranger, even worshipped as a god. If you
need some no-fuss escapism, this is it.

Road trips needn’t be defined by four wheels – or leaving a big
carbon footprint for that matter. Vietnamese-born and
California-raised Andrew X. Pham returns to Saigon having sold
all his possessions in the wake of his trans sister’s suicide. From
here he sets off on a bicycle ride of self-discovery through the
country’s ghost-ridden landscape, across the
Mexican desert and around Japan.