Shahnaz Habib's 6 favorite books that explore different cultures

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Shahnaz Habib's first book, "Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel," recently received the 2024 New American Voices Award and is now available in paperback. Below, the essayist and translator names six favorite books available in English translation.

'Taiwan Travelogue' by Yang Shuang-zi; translated by Lin King (2024)

Set in 1930s Taiwan, this novel follows a Japanese writer who's traveling around the island with a Taiwanese translator. What starts out as a fun journey becomes an exploration of how culture and relationships are shaped by colonialism. Buy it here.

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'Ghachar Ghochar' by Vivek Shanbhag; translated by Srinath Perur (2016)

This novel is a tightly coiled psychological drama. An entrepreneurial family in south India is riding a wave of economic prosperity, but as they adopt the trappings of their newly found wealth, they must reckon with long-forgotten resentments — plus an invasion of ants! Buy it here.

'Minor Detail' by Adania Shibli; translated by Elisabeth Jaquette (2020)

Decades after Israeli soldiers raped and killed a Palestinian teenager during a massacre of Bedouins, a woman in Ramallah becomes obsessed with the story and sneaks into Israel to find out more. Shibli's brilliant novel is about so many things, but the heart of it is how and why we tell stories. Buy it here.

'Boulder' by Eva Baltasar; translated by Julia Sanches (2022)

Boulder, a restless wanderer, is a cook on a ship when she falls in love with a woman who later decides she wants to be a mother. Written from Boulder's wry point of view, the novel explores her descent/ascent into unwilling motherhood. Buy it here.

'The Fly Trap' by Fredrik Sjöberg; translated by Thomas Teal (2015)

A grumpy entomologist, Sjoberg lives on a remote Swedish island and collects hoverflies. His delightful memoir about island living, the joys of collecting, and the relentless passage of time delivers effortless humor and grumpy wisdom. Buy it here.

'The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas' by Machado de Assis; translated by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux (2020)

In this 1881 Brazilian novel, a nobleman reflects on his life from his grave, and his story is a series of missed connections and disappointments, narrated with a superb sense of play. Through his protagonist, de Assis satirizes the foppishness and cruelty of the 19th century's slave-owning white elites. Buy it here.

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