Literary Journeys (Part One)

The power of books. That force that, when we lose ourselves in their pages, makes us dream of voyages fueled by the very imagination of their authors; that entices us, in our minds, to peer into places that exist only in fantasy; or leads us through real destinations made tangible—if only for a moment—by the allure evoked, line by line, by the masters of the pen. And sometimes, without even knowing it, we become the protagonists of an itinerary we’ve already traveled in words, caught between the enchantment of a dream and the concrete world unfolding before our eyes.

From the classics to contemporary works, there are no borders on the map of world literature. Geolocating novels of yesterday and today is a pastime that can easily become the starting point for a honeymoon steeped in culture—and so much more. Discovering, or rediscovering, the places that have shaped our souls offers an alternative way to face our fears, rekindle our desires, and make room for our ambitions… a kind of emotional therapy that, when shared as a couple, can only feel wonderful.

from Japan to Italy, the honeymoon palette reveals countless hues, each woven into deeply personal experiences and bound to the roads already traveled before setting off. Take London, for instance. For thrill-seekers it immediately calls to mind The Da Vinci Code; for devotees of the timeless, it stands as the home of Pride and Prejudice. From Jane Austen to Dan Brown—published in 1813 and 2003 respectively—with that unique lightness only the magic of prose can provide.

Antonio Tabucchi offers an exotic sojourn in his 1983 collection of tales set in the Azores. In “The Woman of Porto Pim,” a tapestry of lives intersecting by chance, he leads us hand in hand to the heart of the Atlantic, orchestrating a bewitching composition across the Portuguese archipelago in which an obsession with detail is taken to the extreme.

Fourteen locations, mapped out to introduce us to two of the world’s greatest masterpieces: Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. Philosophical, historical, scientific references are all deployed with dramatic precision in the first. “A miracle that everyone must greet with emotion,” Eugenio Montale writes of the second. Though separated by nearly a century, both works tell the story of Russia—a land whose few characters stand as emblems of a Moscow brimming with fragility, idiosyncrasies, anxieties, and transformations mirroring those of its people.

Have you read Memoirs of a Geisha? If so, you know—at least on the page—the power of a narrative steeped in millennia-old customs, seen through the eyes of a girl destined for an unchosen future. In 1997, Arthur Golden masterfully transports us to pre-war Kyoto, portraying, through his heroine’s voice, a civilization that for centuries jealously guarded the mysteries of its tradition. And in Un indovino mi disse (A Fortune-Teller Told Me), Tiziano Terzani revisits the East, tracing an itinerary born of prophecy that unfolds from Hong Kong by land and sea—never once boarding a plane.

Shantaram is an audacious epic. In 2003, Gregory David Roberts decided to stake himself—and his swashbuckling adventures—on the page as autobiography. “If fate doesn’t make you laugh, you haven’t understood the joke,” declares one of Australia’s most wanted fugitives, now holed up in Mumbai, as he recounts a series of bold events that will hook any reader from the first comma to the final exclamation mark.

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