My Family and Other Enemies is part travelogue, part memoir that dives into the hinterland of Croatia. Mary Novakovich explores her ongoing relationship with the region of Lika in central Croatia, where her parents were born. In recounting her own family’s tumultuous history, Novakovich opens up a world that is little known outside the Balkans, telling the stories of people whose experiences weren’t widely reported at the time, when the devastation in Croatia was superseded by the Bosnian conflict and media attention moved elsewhere.
In his 2021 bestselling book, Minarets in the Mountains: a Journey into Muslim Europe, author Tharik Hussain tells the story of Europe’s living indigenous Muslim communities in countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro, where they have been living for almost six centuries. Yet the story of Muslim Europe is actually as old as Islam itself. These five places of European Muslim heritage reveal the continent’s fourteen centuries of Islamic presence.
In our Book of the Month for July, Londoner Tharik Hussain sets off with his wife and young daughters around the Western Balkans, home to the largest indigenous Muslim population in Europe, and explores the regions of Eastern Europe where Islam has shaped places and people for more than half a millennium. Encountering blonde-haired, blue-eyed Muslims, visiting mystical Islamic lodges clinging to the side of mountains, and praying in mosques older than the Sistine Chapel, he paints a picture of a hidden Muslim Europe, a vibrant place with a breathtaking history, spellbinding culture and unique identity.
Minarets in The Mountains, the first English travel narrative by a Muslim writer on this subject, also explores the historical roots of European Islamophobia. Tharik and his family learn lessons about themselves and their own identity as Britons, Europeans and Muslims. Following in the footsteps of renowned Ottoman traveller Evliya Celebi, they remind us that Europe is as Muslim as it is Christian, Jewish or pagan.
Like William Dalrymple’s In Xanadu, this is a vivid reimagining of a region’s cultural heritage, unveiling forgotten Muslim communities, empires and their rulers; and like Kapka Kassabova’s Border, it is a quest that forces us to consider what makes up our own identities, and more importantly, who decides?
Watch Tharik Hussain introduce Minarets in the Mountains.
A Connemara Journey is Hilary Bradt’s classic account of a journey through Ireland on horseback in the 1980s published for the first time in a single volume.
In 1984, Hilary Bradt achieved an ambition from her pony-mad childhood to undertake a long-distance ride. Using her experience of horsepacking in Peru with saddlebags imported from America, she and her pony set forth with no decent maps, and only a vague idea of the route. The book is also a portrait of a vanished rural Ireland before the Celtic Tiger era, built up from descriptions and conversations with local people.
The journey takes Bradt a thousand miles south from county Mayo, around the peninsulas of Kerry and Cork, and inland towards Waterford.
From my horsey childhood growing up in the 1950s and addicted to pony books, I had dreamed of having my own pony and going on a long-distance ride. No more riding-school hour doing a circular hack, but days out exploring the countryside with my perfect pony. This finally came to pass in 1984 when I found myself single again and ready to embark on this greatest of all adventures.
First I had to decide where to go.
I know, Iceland! It had all the requirements: lovely scenery, a tough breed of native pony and friendly people who generally spoke English. I’d been there and loved it. I tried out the idea by rather casually mentioning in my Christmas letter that I was going to buy a native pony in Iceland and do a long-distance ride. I received a reply from a horsey friend: “Ireland! What a great idea. A Connemara pony would be strong enough and it’s such a beautiful country. And they love horses.” Oh. My handwriting… well, let’s think about Ireland then. It had never come into my reckoning, perhaps because of a very wet family holiday there where we children had sulkily squelched up Ireland’s highest mountain in mist and rain. But now, suddenly, everything fell into place. Ireland was an ideal choice. Scenic, safe, English-speaking … perfect!
The selected trips are suitable for campervanners, motorcaravanners, long-distance cyclists. basically anyone on a set of wheels, especially those who like to go camping, wild or otherwise (although details of finding alternative accommodation are also included).These self-guided tours will provide the inspiration to set out and explore the less obvious regions of France and Germany. There are routes of all distances, from day/weekend trips of no more than 30 or 40 miles to routes of 1,000 miles and more for those enjoying a longer holiday.
Here the author Caroline Mills recommends the best road trips for food lovers in France:
To celebrate the launch of Scotland From The Rails, author Benedict le Vay takes us on a wee journey to explain exactly what makes seeing Scotland from the rails such a special experience.
Scotland is, truth be told, a land of railway superlatives. As well as the most scenic line in the world, it offers the most romantic rail journeys in Britain. The highest main-line summits. The longest bridge. The highest railway viaduct. The longest and boldest spans. The greatest manmade wonder, some would add. The most famous railway bridge in the world. The two grandest British main lines (one end of each, that is). The most northernly station in Britain, and the most westerly too. The most successful standard-gauge timetabled steam service. The best railway reopenings and electrification projects. The most complex sleeper operations. Some of the friendliest staff, and the loveliest – and sometimes downright quirky – station buildings. And for icing on the cake, or rather cream on the cranachan, some utterly charming preserved lines, steam centres and luxury excursion trains, which cruise through this magnificent land.
Whether you’re planning a Zoom quiz night for friends, looking to while away a cold winter’s day with travel trivia or want to brush up on your geographical knowledge we have lots of great quiz books that will challenge your mind and guarantee you’ll be in great demand to be the geography buff on pub quiz teams (when pubs finally open up again).
Every year we get so excited to hear the Bradt Guides New Travel Writer of the Year shortlist because we know one day we’ll be seeing these names when putting books on our shelves. This year the entrants were invited to submit an original piece of writing of between 600-800 words on the theme ‘I’d love to go back’ focusing on the destination they most want to return to when travel opens up again, and what it is about that place that draws them back.
Colour you way around the world with The Traveller’s Colouring Book featuring over 60 illustrations of people, buildings, wildlife and landscapes from amazing places. Each illustration is accompanied by an informative caption from one of Bradt’s acclaimed travel guides.
It’s a Pub Quiz-setter’s dream. Which Middle-Eastern island’s endemic buzzard flew into the Guinness Book of Records in 2010? Which Arabian island did Britain try to buy for 10,000 dollars in 1834? Which island is sometimes known as the ‘Galapagos of the Indian Ocean’? Where can you play a traditional game named Algashal that resembles fivestones or jacks? Answers: Socotra, Socotra, Socotra and (surprise!) Socotra.
