Our friend Harriet is soon to set off on a big adventure. Over the course of six months next year she and her family will travel - by car, boat and train - from 'Tweed to Tokyo', that is from their home in Scotland's Tweed Valley all the way to Japan. You can see the route above, and here on their blog is a provisional list of stopping points.
Culture will be one of the pillars of the trip, and Harriet is looking for appropriate reading for as many of the countries/cities she visits as possible. I thought we might be able to provide some pointers, so if you can suggest some fiction (including children's) or non-fiction which you feel in some way captures the essence of any of the places on the route or is a 'must read' from a country's literature, please leave a comment below and I'll pass it on.
To get us started here are one or two ideas in no particular order (with links to posts): for Finland, A Winter Book by Tove Jansson; Russia, Eric Newby's The Big Red Train Ride; the Netherlands, I was a Stranger by John Hackett; Hungary, Embers, Sandor Marai; Japan, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell ...
Let's see how far we can get!
