10 Great Works of Travel Literature
Discover 10 unforgettable works of travel literature, from Giles Milton’s *Nathaniel’s Nutmeg* to V.S. Naipaul’s *Among the Believers*—essential books on adventure, history, and world exploration.
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Among the Believers
by V. S. Naipaul
The Nobel Prize-winning author gives us – on the basis of his own intensive seventeen month journey across the Asian continent – an unprecedented revelation of the Islamic world. • “A brilliant report…. A book of scathing inquiry and judgment, whose tragic power is being continually reinforced by current events” (Newsweek). With all the narrative power and intellectual authority that have distinguished his earlier books and won him international acclaim (“There can hardly be a writer alive who surpasses him” – Irving Howe, The New York Times Book Review), Naipaul explores the life, the culture, the ferment inside the nations of Islam – in a book that combines the fascinations of the great works of travel literature with the insights of a uniquely sharp, original, and idiosyncratic political mind. He takes us into four countries in the throes of “Islamization” – countries that, in their ardor to build new societies based entirely on the fundamental laws of Islam, have violently rejected the “materialism” of the technologically advanced nations that have long supported them. He brings us close to the people of Islam – how they live and work, the role of faith in their lives, how they see their place in the modern world.
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Nathaniel's Nutmeg, Or, The True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader who Changed the Course of History
by Giles Milton
Chronicles the exploits of Nathaniel Courthope in the Spice Islands of the early seventeenth century.