I grew up traveling — lived in different countries, visited others. It’s a pattern I carried into my adult life. And I was particularly lucky that I had parents who really knew how to travel. They were adventurous, curious and open. That doesn’t mean they climbed the Himalayas or hitchhiked across Patagonia. But they were readers. And through their reading they learned about new places, people and cultures. Often they would then venture forth and experience them in person.
They’d always have one real guidebook — given my father’s complete inability to get from point A to point B without visiting points D, K and L first. But the books they used to guide them were memoirs, travelogues and novels. I vividly remember the first time I became aware of their ingenious travel secret. They were living in Spain and we had decided to do a cross-country trip from Barcelona to Madrid.
For that trip we used James Michner’s Iberia, a memoir of his time in Spain during the nineteen-sixties. The writing is amazing. His images breathtaking. Spain had changed enormously by the late seventies when we took our trip. But using him as our guide gave us so much appreciation of what was enduring and what was changing.
When we got to Granada, I found an old copy of Rudyard Kipling’s Tales of the Alhambra. It was a weekday and past tourist season, so I had time to roam or linger with little disruption. As I sat in the cool shade near of one of the courtyards reading “The Legend of the Three Beautiful Princesses,” I was transported back in time. I could see the valley they gazed over. I had walked past the fountains of the gardens in their gilded cage. I could picture their escape. What a magical afternoon.
If you venture to Spain, I heartily recommend you consider reading Iberia and Tales of the Alhambra before or as you go. There are lots of other books, of course. Here are some of my personal recommendations:
Two classics set during the Spanish Civil War:
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
And a couple more modern contributions:
Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (translated by Lucia Graves), again partially set during the Civil War. This is a rich, lyrical, mystical, very Spanish work — I personally enjoyed it most in the audio version.
Madrid Tales — an anthology of Spanish short stories translated by Helen Constantine and Margaret Jull Costa. Not all the stories will appeal, but they are a great initiation into modern Madrid, and Spain.
Happy reading and bon voyage.
Eclectic World, Eclectic Mind 