Hussain challenges long-held notions of European identity by
tracing Islam’s origins beyond the Iberian Peninsula into the
Balkans. The author, his wife and their two children set off from
London on a revelatory road trip through Albania, Serbia, North
Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo, searching for what Hussain
describes as “Muslim Europe”. What he finds – mosques older than
the Sistine Chapel, a vibrant Muslim heritage dating back centuries
and almost (almost!) indescribable natural beauty – leaves you
craving more of his evocative and highly informative writing on
this little-explored subject.

Read
Now

From the moment Outline opens, with the protagonist on a flight
to Greece, you know you’re in for a good time. Where exactly is she
going? Athens, to teach a summer writing course. And so begins a
series of snapshots into the lives of her students, colleagues and
friends, which encapsulates vivid descriptions of life in the
labyrinthine Greek capital. Cusk’s prose is heavenly in a sharply
observed, acerbic way. And while the bulk of the book is rooted in
character, it’s the surrounding scenes, the air, which develops “a
kind of viscosity”, and the plates of “cold, delicate mussels” that
kept us reading between the lines.

Read
Now

Having worked as foreign correspondent and world affairs editor
at the BBC for 55 years, veteran journalist John Simpson is a man
almost as famous as his characters. In his second autobiographical
book, he writes of the villains, heroes, heads of state and
citizens caught in the crossfire of the late 20th century, plus the
places in which he finds them. This unputdownable memoir is as much
a political and historical chronicle of major world events as it is
a travelogue covering areas as near as 1980s Belfast and as far as
Remolino, southern Colombia. Simpson’s personal encounters with
figures like Muammar Gaddafi and Fidel Castro anchor the dozens of
vignettes that fill the many pages. Still, it’s the compelling
descriptions of place, culture and, of course, ordinary people
doing extraordinary things that make this memoir one you will
reread, in awe, often.

Read
Now

Danler’s memoir moonlights as a meditation on California and its
fault lines, which, for Danler, are both topographical and
emotional. The author, who grew up in Seal Beach, a stone’s throw
from western Los Angeles, revisits the surfer-and-skateboard
California of her childhood and explores the unstable condition of
the state in her adulthood through a series of exquisitely written,
searing recollections. As your eye travels across pages and
chapters, you journey to Owens Lake, rendered a dust bowl by a
climate disaster. And to the slippery slopes of Laurel Canyon,
where Danler lives in a house ready to slide down the hill (one
reportedly occupied by Fleetwood Mac in the Seventies, which is, of
course, the realtor’s sell). And, while this book is rooted in
Danler’s lived experience, California is its own vividly beautiful
character, with Danler, in the vein of Joan Didion, offering a
window into the iconic state through her own well-honed lens.

Read Now

Journalist Sophy Roberts is renowned for going off-grid. And
much of Siberia – a whopping eleventh of the world’s landmass – is
very much off-grid. But this story starts with the tinkling of a
friend’s piano in a Mongolian ger. Roberts, a regular visitor to
the Mongolian steppe, becomes transfixed with the idea of tracking
down a particular piano – from the many instruments hauled to
Siberia on the back of sledges during the height of Russian piano
mania – worthy of her friend’s musical talent. Thus begins an
odyssey of trains, planes and skimobiles across an inhospitable
landscape – one that’s sub-zero in the winter and swelteringly hot
throughout the summer. The resilience of the people Roberts
encounters will make you sob, as will the layered history of this
mythical place she tries so hard to knit together. Magic.

Read
Now

Fuller, one of the most evocative memoirists of today, journeys
back home to the southern African homelands of her youth in this
moving account, which is an ode to her adored late father. From a
sad start at the indomitable Tim Fuller’s deathbed in Budapest to
tales of his earlier life as a banana farmer in Zambia, this book
sparkles with wit, insight and breath-taking descriptions of a hard
life well lived. You can’t help but feel the sweat of sweltering
summer nights, the earthy smell of cool mornings on the farm before
sunrise and the bustle of busy capital city Lusaka, as Fuller
details the triumphs and tragedies of a complicated family living
in a complicated place.

Read
Now

Snow-caked plains. Starry skies. A vanishing way of life. Li
Juan’s visceral account of nights spent in the company of Kazakh
herders and their party of camels, horses, cattle and sheep, plus
one dog and a cat, is as transporting as it is engaging. Despite
the starkness of the desert landscape of Xinjiang, there is a quiet
beauty in the desolate sand-dune towers that articulate the
landscape. But, amid this stark beauty lies the struggle. Juan
details the building of the burrow, a single room carved deep into
the snow and reinforced with sheep dung and made homely with
textiles and the hum of chatter. Never mind, the back-breaking work
of sustaining the animals on which your livelihood depends. By the
book’s end, the future is unclear for the herders and their ancient
way of life.

Read
Now