Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme where every Tuesday we look at a particular topic for discussion and use various (or more to the point ten) bookish examples to demonstrate that particular topic.  Top Ten Tuesday (created and hosted by  The Broke and Bookish) is now being hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl and future week’s topics can be found here.  This week’s topic is :

Books That Take Place In Another Country

As I read primarily speculative fiction I’ve used examples of books that take place in real places that we all know but are versions with fantasy elements, either living alongside regular humans, in hiding, beneath the city or making all out war or the like.  I’ve given a snippet of information from GR for each book:

SOUTH AFRICA – Zoo City by Lauren Beukes : ‘a standalone novel set in Johannesburg, South Africa. Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit, and a talent for finding lost things. But when a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, she’s forced to take on her least favourite kind of job – missing persons.’

LONDON – Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman : ‘Under the streets of London there’s a place most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks.’

RUSSIA – Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden : ‘In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, an elderly servant tells stories of sorcery, folklore and the Winter King to the children of the family, tales of old magic frowned upon by the church.’

AMERICA – Mr Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett : Set during the Great Depression ‘this is the story of an America haunted by murder and desperation. A world in which one man must face a dark truth and answer the question-how much is he willing to sacrifice for his satisfaction?’

MALAYSIA – The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo : ‘Yangsze Choo’s stunning debut, The Ghost Bride, is a startlingly original novel infused with Chinese folklore, romantic intrigue, and unexpected supernatural twists.’

ITALY – The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore : ‘Christopher Moore channels William Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe in this satiric Venetian gothic that brings back the Pocket of Dog Snogging, the eponymous hero of Fool, along with his sidekick, Drool, and pet monkey, Jeff’

FRANCE – The Undying by Ethan Reid : ‘In this riveting apocalyptic thriller for fans of The Passage and The Walking Dead, a mysterious event plunges Paris into darkness and a young American must lead her friends to safety—and escape the ravenous “undying” who now roam the crumbling city.’

SPAIN – The Invisible Guardian by Dolores Redondo : ‘This tautly written and gripping psychological thriller forces a police inspector to reluctantly return to her hometown in Basque Country—a place engulfed in mythology and superstition—to solve a series of eerie murders.’

GREECE – The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller : ‘Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. By all rights their paths should never cross, but Achilles takes the shamed prince as his friend, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine their bond blossoms into something deeper’

I’ve stopped at nine so you can share with me your own travel through books experience.