Journalist, travel writer and author Shafik Meghji recommends some of his favourite reads. His latest book, Small Earthquakes, is out now
Shafik Meghji is an award-winning journalist, travel writer and author who specialises in Latin America. His new book, Small Earthquakes, uncovers Britain’s lost history in South America. Read on to find out some more of his top literary picks…
Fiesta by Daniel Stables (2025)
A fascinating travel narrative that explores the dazzling depth and breadth of human festivity – carnivals, funerals, pilgrimages, rites of passage and much more – from Sulawesi to Venice and Andalucia to Lancashire.
Wreckers by Simon Park (2025)
Wreckers is a sharply written corrective to the tired imperial narratives, revealing the ‘violent, chaotic and improvised reality’ of early European empire-building – tales of greed, envy, misjudgment, foolishness and frequent disaster.
Black Ghosts by Noo Saro-Wiwa (2023)
Winner of this year’s Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year, Black Ghosts is an original and insightful journey in search of African migrants seeking opportunities and forging trade links in China.
The Last American Road Trip by Sarah Kendzior (2025)
Blending memoir, travel, politics and history, this incisive and evocative examination of a fractured America is set around a series of family road trips that take in ‘relics and ruins, truck stops and tourist traps’.
Uttermost Part of the Earth by Lucas Bridges (1948)
An overlooked travel memoir charting the colonisation, settlement and development of Tierra del Fuego in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the devastating impact on the Indigenous population.
Daybreak in Gaza, edited by Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller (2024)
A powerful, timely and illuminating collection of Gazan stories, vignettes and accounts that amplifies marginalised voices, reveals hidden histories and subverts pervasive media stereotypes.
The Last Stand of the Raven Clan by Gerald Easter and Mara Vorhees (2024)
An immersive and deeply researched book that tells the remarkable story of how the Tlingit people of what is now southeast Alaska thwarted Russia’s colonial ambitions during the 19th century.
