Choosing the right novel to read on holiday is important – so a classic, a text that’s been delighting readers for years, might be a good option. The peace and quiet that comes with a holiday can create the ideal opportunity to try a book you’ve long wanted to read. The best novels are as transporting as travel itself and if you click with a classic on holiday it will both enrich your trip and forever be synonymous with where you read it. Here are 11 to try this summer.
Emma by Jane Austen
The eponymous Emma Woodhouse, “handsome, clever and rich”, is so full of herself that Austen feared readers would dislike her. Fortunately, Emma is also fun and ripe for transformation, whether she realises it or not, and our feelings about her evolve across this story of small town society, self-delusion and courtship. The characters are recognisable and relatable, whether it’s Mr Knightley, Harriet Smith or Emma herself who, by the end, has managed to mature without sacrificing her joie de vivre.
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
In this short masterpiece, first published in 1912, Aschenbach, an ailing middle-aged writer, travels to the Italian city. There he becomes obsessed with Tadzio, a 14-year-old boy, who is there with his aristocratic Polish family and whom Aschenbach compares to a Greek god. A dubious premise, perhaps – but the novel is a meditation on art, beauty (in one translation Mann writes that every artist has a “tell-tale bias in favour of the injustice that creates beauty”) and death, as cholera sweeps Venice.
