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5 Books about Travelling Ideas

pictures of the books mentioned in the text

5 Books about Travelling Ideas

Physical bodies travel across oceans, mountains, and borders. Ideas too can travel from place to place, context to context. Here are 5 books that we think represent how an idea can travel.  

Babel by R.F. Kuang 

Innovative, inspirational, and imaginative, Babel by R.F. Kuang underscores the intricate nature of language and translation. Robin Swift, a young Chinese boy, is taken to the 1828 Oxford Institute of Translation “Babel”, to learn to utilize the power of untranslatable concepts, which provide the basis of British global imperialism. The more he discovers about the power that hides within translation, the more he becomes caught between his comfortable future as an imperial translator and his uncertain allegiance to a revolutionary group aiming to end Britain’s colonial domination.  

A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam 

A phone call out of the blue informing Krishan of his grandmother’s caretaker’s death, and the resulting journey northwards, triggers the beginning of an introspective discussion of the trauma faced by individuals after the end of Sri Lanka’s 30 years of civil war. Through the main character of Krishan, a man who is attempting to come to terms with his identity as a diasporic Tamil who knows the war only through blog posts and online images, Arudpragasam explores the trauma of someone undergoing survivor’s guilt as they are exposed to the legacy of the bloodiest period of Sri Lankan history. A Passage North functions as a melancholic memorial to those who were lost, and those who were allowed to continue living.  

Issa by Mirrianne Mahn 

Twenty years old, pregnant, and on a flight to her birth country of Cameroon, which she has not visited since the age of five, Issa feels caught between two warring cultural spheres. During her visit she becomes more deeply connected with the women in her family’s history and manages to make peace with her split identity and her family’s traumatic past. While Issa is foremost a story about inherited trauma being passed down, it does not fail to make the point that unconditional love and strength through adversity too, can be passed down just the same.  

Anita and Me by Meera Syal 

Young, immature, and full of conviction, Meena, a young Punjabi girl living with her diasporic family in the former British mining village of Tollington, is a handful. The book focuses on the experience of a daughter whose parents traveled to the UK from India; Partition is a constant undertone in many of her family’s discussions of their past. The “Paki-bashing” and National Front which will arise over the next decade are masterfully foreshadowed throughout the novel. Meena navigates life as a young member of a diasporic community who is caught between two cultures.  

Dispersals by Jessica J. Lee

Dispersals, On Plants, Borders and Belonging consists of fourteen personal essays about plants crossing borders and putting down roots in new places. Jessica J. Lee chooses several trees, shrubs and algae, which hold meaning in her own life, to engage with their history and journeys into different parts of the world. In doing so, she questions under what circumstances species are considered either cosmopolitan or invasive. What is clear is that plants are on the move – just like humans. This requires a lot of adaptation.

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