During our years abroad, and as preparation for our travels, we read a lot. Or better, we find a lot of books about the countries we visit, many of which we read, too. The reading lists for the various countries and areas below are by no means complete, but hopefully serve as a useful starter for anybody wanting to learn more. Note that some of the lists will be dated to the last time we took an interest in the specific country, and may not contain the most recent publications. They do contain my favourites, to help you choose. The views about the individual books are entirely personal, of course.
Reading Lists:
Haiti: a brief list initially put together for collegues in 2010, from books before 2000, to which I later added a bit.
Argentina: a short list put together in 2013 (but I will be adding, I hope)
Caucasus: a couple of books on Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia, from 2019 and 2022.
Chile and Peru: another short list, from our 2019 trip
Democratic Republic of Congo: a list for Congo, where we haven’t traveled – but I wrote about, anyhow
Indonesia: a very long list, the result of my 2007 library, combined with what I found for our 2013 journey
Indochina: a varied list of books that helped me enjoy our 2011 travels here
Lebanon: a list dating from 2011, with a few books on this small country, and the wider context
Horn of Africa: a list, mostly covering Ethiopia, which I put together after our 2012 journey there
Romania and Bulgaria: a selection of fiction and non-fiction, mostly for Romania, created in 2014
Central Asia: the books I read for and during our Stans trip, mostly on Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, spring 2015
Iran: history, current affairs and travel books, this list is from autumn 2016
There are also several individual books that I found interesting enough to describe in more detail, see the ones below: