Some of my favourite different culture books never made it onto a travel shelf. They are novels, memoirs, short stories, and a slightly odd self-help book, and each one dropped me somewhere I had never been (or somewhere I thought I knew). This is my travel lit list for when the bank account says no to a flight, but the brain says go.
Different Culture Books To Read Before Your Next Trip
1. Permafrost by Eva Baltasar
📍 Barcelona, Catalonia
A short, sharp, darkly funny novel narrated by a woman who refuses to fit any shape her family wants for her. It is less postcard Barcelona and more what it feels like to live inside a culture you are slightly allergic to. It is the first of a loose trilogy, so if it grabs you, Boulder and Mammoth are waiting.
Read it if you like your books small and your sentences sharp.
2. The Travelling Belly by Kalyan Karmakar
📍 India and beyond
Written by the Mumbai food blogger behind Finely Chopped, this one follows his stomach across India and abroad. It is exactly the kind of different culture book I wish existed for every country, a culture explained through what people put on the table. Do not read it hungry (I did, and I regret nothing).
Read it if you plan your trips around meals.
3. Honjok, The Art of Living Alone by Crystal Tai and Francie Healey
📍 South Korea
Honjok is the Korean movement of people choosing to live, eat (honbap) and drink (honsul) alone. In a culture where so much is built around family, the office and the group, it is fascinating to read about the people stepping out of it. It made a lot of my Korean culture shock moments click into place.
Read it if you are planning a solo trip to Korea, or just a solo dinner.
4. The Dinner by Herman Koch
📍 Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Two couples, one fancy restaurant, one dinner served course by course, and a family secret that gets uglier with every plate. It is a thriller, but it is also a very Dutch study of politeness, privilege and what people will say out loud (and what they will not).
Read it if you like your dinner parties tense.
5. Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu
📍 Indonesia
Norman is a queer Batak writer, and this collection was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022. The stories are strange, tender and very Indonesian in a way that rarely makes it into English. As an Indonesian reader, I felt seen in places I did not expect, which is not something I say about many different culture books written about my own.
Read it if you want an Indonesia that is not on a Bali brochure.
6. 28 Questions by Indyana Schneider
📍 Oxford and beyond
Two Australian music students meet at Oxford, and the story follows them across four years and five cities. It is a queer love story first, but it is also about being an Australian abroad and figuring out who you are when you are far from home.
Read it if you have ever moved countries and fallen hard for someone.
7. Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles
📍 New Zealand, Malaysia, China and the UK
Nina writes about growing up between cultures, through food, language and swimming in every body of water she can find. Her writing is lyrical without being precious, and it reads like a very beautiful travel journal. If you love it, her Shanghai food book Tiny Moons is the perfect follow-up.
Read it if you are mixed, diasporic, or simply in love with the sea.
Different culture books are still the cheapest plane tickets I own. None of them will get you a passport stamp, but each one gave me a small piece of another culture to carry around, and a few of them pushed places onto my bucket list. If you have a book that did the same for you, send it my way. My to-read pile is already a hazard, but there is always room for one more.
Follow me on Instagram @KultureKween for more updates.
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