Pico Iyer on World Hum’s Top 30 Travel Books

Last month, we posted our list of the Top 30 Travel Books of all time, to which I contributed a number of reviews. After the dust settled and dozens of readers weighed in with their own recommendations, it occurred to me that I correspond with a number of the authors who made the list. What, I thought, would Pico Iyer or Peter Hessler or Tony Horwitz or Tim Cahill or Jeffrey Tayler think of the selections? Curious, I queried these five writers, all of whom gave me thoughtful replies. I’ll share comments from each of these writers in coming days, starting today with Pico Iyer, whose “Video Night in Kathmandu” weighed in at number 8 on the list.

Pico replies:

It’s a highly, highly quirky list—Shiva Naipaul right up there and V.S. Naipaul for his most laughable book at the bottom!—but I’m flattered to be in such company, and anyone who loves The Golden Earth is automatically a hero in my book (also very strongly weighted towards the contemporary, though I’m very glad to see Peter Hessler so highly recommended). I thought last night of a few of the travel-books that I would always keep close and put on any list of inspirations:

Colossus of Maroussi , by Henry MIller
The Rings of Saturn, by W.G. Sebald
The Inland Sea, by Donald Richie
The Gentleman in the Parlour: A Record of a Journey from Rangoon to Haiphong, by Somerset Maugham

All of those books would be in my Top 15 to Top 20 list. Additionally, I highly recommend:

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
Seven Years in Tibet, by Heinrich Harrer
Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen
Hindoo Holiday: An Indian Journal , by J.R. Ackerley
Watermark, by Joseph Brodsky
Istanbul: Memories and the City (a recent entry), by Orhan Pamuk
Westward Ha!, by S.J. Perelman
Sea and Sardinia, by D.H. Lawrence

...and, I think, lots of others that I’m not remembering right now.

Thanks again, so much, for sending me this fun and fascinating list.

—Rolf Potts is a frequent contributor to World Hum.

 

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