The first book that comes to mind is a historical-fiction novel called Bridge over the Drina by the renowned Yugoslav writer Ivo Andri?. I always look for local books when on holiday –translated of course! – and this book was recommended to me in Belgrade in the early 2000s. It has been a firm favourite since, so much so that in 2012 I decided to go and visit Mehmed Paša Sokolovi? Bridge in Višegrad, eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, either side of which the novel is set. The novel follows the development of a town at the river Drina, its Serbian and Bosnian-Muslim residents over 400 years and the social impact the construction of the bridge had on the area. As such, there are many heroes and villains throughout the book, rather than one main protagonist. The real survivor is the bridge and area around it; it was amazing to see it and view it from the same angle as the cover. 

I’m less likely to visit most of the settings of Graham Greene’s novels. However, one place I did get to visit was Havana, the setting, unsurprisingly, for his 1958 black comedy novel, Our Man in Havana. Greene is the ideal travel fiction author and combines his experience working for MI6 with his exotic travel record to create truly entertaining detective fiction novels. In his line of work for MI6 he came across many instances of European powers gullibly believing the fictitious reports of faraway “local agents”, who were only delighted to be well compensated in return. Greene’s Havana creation is James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman, who in his desire to satisfy his handler, creates a complex and ever-deepening network of fictitious Cuban agents which, as it becomes ever so fantastic, begins to spiral out of control. As for my own visit to Havana, my wife and I took our ten month-old on a B&B-hopping tour of Cuba, starting and finishing in the capital. Would we repeat the ten-hour flights each way and the seat-beltless and speedometer-less shared taxi journeys from city to city? Probably not! But we still had a wonderful time, particularly in Havana and Cienfuegos. It was the tourist town of Trinidad that brought us through the less-mentioned Cienfuegos, and it was here that we got to see more of the day-to-day life of Cubans: the horse and carts dropping nurses to work; shops containing so much of the same items that they become a photo opportunity; fishermen lining the piers from morning to night. Of course, you can see and do this all over Cuba, but for our situation, Cienfuegos was the most accessible.

Closer to home, I recently read Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s remarkable novel A Ghost in the Throat. In A Ghost in the Throat, Doireann Ní Ghríofa recounts and relates two true female life stories 300 years apart – her own and that of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, the woman behind the incredible 18^th-century keen, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire. Ní Ghríofa travels across Cork and Kerry piecing together much of Ní Chonaill’s long-forgotten life. It was such a challenge to first overcome the mountain of missing evidence such as diaries and letters that we know once existed, and second to manage a four-child family around long road trips undertook in the hope of tracking down another small piece of information. After reading Ní Ghríofa’s work, Kilcrea Abbey, the final resting place of Airt Ó Laoghaire and Derrynane, the family home of Eibhlín Dubh, both feature on my list of must-visit Irish destinations. 

From the very beginning, A Ghost in the Throat reminded me of the classic travel fictionalised autobiography from a completely different genre, Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Both novels weave two stories together; both involve author experience engaging with and researching a specific topic; and both are equally enlightening. While Ní Ghríofa focuses more on the historical and social, Pirsig’s is a combination of philosophical analysis of the concept of “Quality” with the much more enjoyable (for me) motorcycle ride with his son from Minnesota to California. As for tracing this journey myself, I came close once; I even bought the maps and made some contacts along the route – alas, it is now one more item on my long travel bucket list.

Risteard Mac Liam’s latest book, illustrated by Tatyana Feeney, Mo Chuid Amhráin Ghaeilge 2, is available at www.myirishbooks.com and in selected stores nationwide.