Books set in Europe
327 places · 1,498 books
The heart of the library: Paris, London and Rome, the Mediterranean islands, the Nordic north, and the Atlantic coast around La Rochelle.
Paris
- 2024Louvre, Paris
A girl who may go blind sees one work of art a week in Paris museums with her grandfather.
- 2016
- 2015Buttes-Chaumont, Paris
Evicted, a former record-shop owner drifts from sofa to sofa across today’s Paris.
Provence
- 2016Monieux, Provence
11th century: a Rouen girl flees with the Jewish man she loves to Monieux, in Provence.
- 2004Luberon, Provence
A sacked London banker inherits his uncle’s run-down vineyard in the Luberon.
- 2002Vaison-la-Romaine, Provence · also Avignon
Three men in Avignon and Vaison as Rome falls, the plague comes and the Germans occupy.
Rome
- 2026
A student and his neighbour cross a gleaming Rome by motorbike: a whole life in one day.
- 2023also Vatican City
1943: an Irish priest in the Vatican runs an escape line under the Gestapo’s eyes.
- 2022
Venice
- 2024Murano, Venice
From 1486: a glassmaker’s daughter on Murano makes beads as the centuries skip by.
- 2024
A brawl between teenage gangs in a Venice campo leads Brunetti to a wounded veteran.
- 2023
A man is found dead in a Venice canal, and Brunetti goes back to his own student years.
Naples
- 2020Soccavo, Naples
A boy footballer in Soccavo, a hard Naples neighbourhood, after his mother leaves.
- 2019
A girl from the heights of Naples goes down to the poor city her father came from.
- 2016
London
- 2024Caledonian Road, London
A celebrity art historian’s fall exposes London from its oligarchs to its streets.
- 2021also Nicosia
1974: a Greek and a Turkish Cypriot meet secretly in a Nicosia tavern.
- 2021Foundling Hospital, London
1850s: a foundling left by Hyde Park, raised in the London Foundling Hospital.
Madrid
- 2019
Madrid, 1957: a Texan boy at the Castellana Hilton and a maid with her family’s secret.
- 2017
- 2011
A young American poet on a fellowship in Madrid, as the train bombings strike.
Athens
- 2019
- 2014
- 2010
Workers on the edges of Athens and Piraeus, as the debt crisis takes hold.
Moscow
- 2022Kremlin, Moscow
Putin’s spin doctor tells how a theatre man came to stage-manage the new Russia.
- 2022
- 2016Hotel Metropol, Moscow
1922: a count is sentenced to spend his life inside Moscow’s Hotel Metropol.
Berlin
- 2022
- 2021
- 2020Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin
1990: a young poet squats in Prenzlauer Berg as East Berlin falls open after the Wall.
Istanbul
- 2019
A murdered prostitute remembers her Istanbul, and five friends go to find her grave.
- 2017
Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul: eight thousand years of the city on the Bosphorus.
- 2016also Oxford
A dinner party in Istanbul, and the Oxford friendships that broke her years before.
Vienna
- 2023Karmelitermarkt, Vienna
1966–1976: a café by the Karmelitermarkt and the Viennese who pass through it.
- 2015
- 2012Währinger Straße, Vienna
1937: a country boy works in a Vienna tobacco shop and befriends Sigmund Freud.
Books set in Africa
32 places · 96 books
Mahfouz’s Cairo, Durrell’s Alexandria, Camus’s Algeria and Morocco, then south to Blixen’s Kenya, Mauritius and Coetzee’s Cape.
Cairo
- 2018
The young who filled Tahrir Square in 2011, and the men who crushed them.
- 2006
- 2002
A faded downtown Cairo block, from the old pasha’s flat to the families on its roof.
Alexandria
- 1996
A Muslim sheikh and a Copt become friends in Alexandria under the bombs of 1940–42.
- 1994
- 1986
Upper Egypt
- 1945
- 1944
- 1937
Algiers
- 2017
- 2013also Oran
The brother of the Arab Meursault killed answers back, from a bar in Oran.
- 2010
1957, the battle of Algiers: a French captain and the torture he can no longer bear.
Tangier
- 2012also Barcelona
A young Moroccan from Tangier washes up in Barcelona’s Raval as the Arab Spring begins.
- 2006
- 1991
A prying American couple threatens Ripley’s country life, and he takes Héloïse to Tangier.
Tunis
- 2020
1935: a rumoured affair with Tahar Haddad tears apart two great families of Tunis.
- 2014
- 1979
Books set in Asia
38 places · 84 books
Pamuk’s Kars and Anatolia, Siberia, Duras’s Saigon and Calcutta, Malraux’s Shanghai, Kyoto and Tokyo, Beirut, Jerusalem, Tehran and Kabul.
Anatolia
Troy
- 2018
Briseis, given to Achilles as a prize, sees the Trojan War from the Greek camp.
- 2011
- 1983
Beijing
- 2008Tiananmen Square, Beijing
1989: shot at Tiananmen, a student lies in a coma for ten years as Beijing changes.
- 1993San Li Tun, Beijing
1970s: a diplomat’s little daughter wages war in Beijing’s San Li Tun embassy compound.
- 1988also Tirana
Early 1970s: Albania’s alliance with Mao’s China begins to crack, seen from Tirana.
Tokyo
- 2007
- 1999
A young Belgian’s year in a great Tokyo company, from translator to toilet cleaner.
- 1987
Siberia
- 2011Lake Baikal, Siberia
Six months alone in a cabin on the shore of Lake Baikal: ice, taiga, books and vodka.
- 1999
From the Urals to the Pacific after the Soviet fall, among shamans, camps and dying towns.
- 1995
A boy summering on the Russian steppe learns France from his French grandmother’s tales.
Kolkata
- 2008
1838: opium fields up the Ganges, and a ship of convicts and migrants leaving Calcutta.
- 1985Anand Nagar, Kolkata
A Polish priest and a rickshaw puller in Anand Nagar, a slum of Calcutta.
- 1973
Books set in the Americas
20 places · 50 books
Miller’s New York and Big Sur, Steinbeck’s Monterey, Maria Chapdelaine’s Quebec, Lowry’s Mexico, Havana, Patagonia and the French Caribbean.
New York
- 2013also Amsterdam
A boy who survives a museum bomb keeps a stolen painting, from New York to Amsterdam.
- 1992Brooklyn, New York
1920s Brooklyn: a Western Union hiring boss, a failing marriage and a city of strangers.
- 1991Greenwich Village, New York
1920s Greenwich Village: Tony’s wife Hildred falls for another woman, Vanya.
Monterey
- 1962Bixby Canyon, Monterey
Kerouac flees his fame to Ferlinghetti’s cabin in Bixby Canyon and cracks up.
- 1959Big Sur, Monterey
Perlès joins Henry Miller in his Big Sur cabin, twenty years after their Paris years.
- 1957Big Sur, Monterey
Miller’s fifteen years on the cliffs of Big Sur, with neighbours, children and visitors.
Guadeloupe
- 2006Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe
Condé’s grandmother, an unlettered cook for a white Creole family, and her art.
- 1999Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe
1940s: Condé’s childhood in a proud, French-minded family of Pointe-à-Pitre.
- 1989Rivière au Sel, Guadeloupe
A stranger is found dead in a Guadeloupe village; at his wake, each mourner tells.
Martinique
- 1992Fort-de-France, Martinique
A shantytown above Fort-de-France, told by the woman who founded it, across 150 years.
- 1988Fort-de-France, Martinique
A storyteller dies mid-tale on the Savane, and the police question his listeners.
- 1950
1930s: a boy of the cane fields, raised by his grandmother, wins his way to school.
Saint Lawrence
- 1889
1837: a family of the Saint Lawrence valley in the Patriotes’ rising against the British.
- 1545
1534–1542: Cartier sails up the Saint Lawrence to Stadacona and Hochelaga.
Patagonia
- 1977
- 1905Isla de los Estados, Patagonia
1859: three keepers of a new lighthouse on Isla de los Estados face a band of wreckers.
- 1893
Books set in Oceania
6 places · 18 books
Tahiti from Bougainville to Gauguin, the Marquesas, New Caledonia, Mansfield’s Wellington and Chatwin’s songlines.
Tahiti
- 1991
The first Polynesian novel: a family over four generations, up to the nuclear tests.
- 1932Matavai Bay, Tahiti
1788: the Bounty’s five months at Tahiti, the mutiny, and the island the men return to.
- 1919also Paris
A London stockbroker turned painter, after Gauguin, ends his days in Tahiti.
Marquesas Islands
- 1974Fatu Hiva, Marquesas Islands
1937: Heyerdahl and his young wife try to live as islanders on Fatu Hiva.
- 1896
- 1846
New Caledonia
- 2005
- 1998
- 1980
New South Wales
- 2005Hawkesbury River, New South Wales
1806: a transported London bargeman takes land on the Hawkesbury, against its own people.
- 1923
Alice Springs
- 1987
Wellington
- 1922
Wellington’s hill gardens and bays, and a girl who leaves a party for a dead man’s house.