Inspired by Around the World in 80 Days, the first film he recalls seeing as a child, David Damrosch, Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard, offers readers a literary world tour with his new The World in 80 Books. Conceived as an online course during the pandemic, Damrosch’s book “explores works that have responded to times of crisis and deep memories of trauma.” However, he quickly points out that the chosen books are not “all doom and gloom” because readers also “need literature as a refuge in troubled times.”

Through the pages and his comments on chosen books that fill those pages, Damrosch guides readers on a personally selected itinerary of five books to suit each stop on the route: London, Paris, Krakow, Venice-Florence, Cairo-Istanbul-Muscat, The Congo-Nigeria, Israel-Palestine, Tehran-Shiraz, Calcutta/Kolkata, Shanghai-Beijing, Tokyo-Kyoto, Brazil-Columbia, Mexico-Guatemala, The Antilles and Beyond, Bar Harbor, and New York. The diversity of his book choices mirror the diversity of the destinations: Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Complete Sherlock Holmes and Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights, Boccaccio’s The Decameron and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis, Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy and Jumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji and E. B. White’s Stuart Little, just to name a few.

Each destination also focuses on a different theme. For example, the Cairo-Istanbul-Muskat theme is “Stories within Stories,” the Calcutta/Kolkata theme “Rewriting Empires,” and the Brazil-Columbia theme “Utopias, Dystopias, Heterotopias.” Damrosch repeatedly introduces new places, literary works, and ideas.

Whether readers seek Damrosch’s thoughts on books they already know or wish to discover important global books they have not read, this is a thoughtful, thought-provoking non-fiction look at great literature.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Press for an advance reader copy.

I always enjoy it when life imitates art, so really enjoyed Damrosch's channeling "Around the World in 80 Days" as he developed this book. (Coincidentally, I haven't read the source material, but I'd really like to and it was already on my list before reading this.)

It's also interesting to see what an author chooses as representative of a given place, and where our choices overlap. I've read a good few of Damrosch's selections, and appreciated his take on them, whether or not we came to the same conclusion.

Damrosch very effectively encourages the reader to read books not just by authors we are reasonably confident we'll agree with, but of those who we don't. This can help us reexamine why we believe what we do, and either change or minds or help us articulate even further our own beliefs. That being said, there are some books/authors that--thanks to this read--I don't feel the need to pursue further, lol (namely, Virginia Woolf ... good to know of content advisories that will either drive people to a book, or further away).

I received an eARC of the book from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I loved to travel around the world with the help of the books mentioned in the book. I think this a good book for any book lover to have in their own library.

A booklover's guide to world in 80 books. I'm always on the look-out for good lists of books I should read or could read or may read. This one does not disappoint. Damrosch truly covers the world from Mrs Dalloway in London, all the way back around to The Lord of the Rings in Middle Earth. He provides a real sense of time and place for each of the books covered, as well as comparing and contrasting the authors discussed throughout. I wrote down the name of every book and author and now I need to get reading. Bibliophiles will want a reference copy for their libraries.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

David Damrosch’s comp lit world tour has a simple premise. You’re a traveler and the pandemic strikes, how do you travel by book while trapped at home? For those who think travel and reading are unrelated endeavors, I disagree. As a traveler and avid reader, I’ve always found the two intertwined in building a greater understanding of the world. Reading is an essential part of traveling, and I read literature from every place I visit. Why? Because people the world over are guarded, yearning to make good impressions. Because of this, one gets a partial and distorted view of other cultures. Poets and novelists round out the picture by airing the dirty laundry of their people. It’s not that revealing the dark and ugly edges of a culture is their foremost objective, but those are good sources of tension in a novel and of emotional resonance in a poem. [Seeking out what’s not so pretty about a culture might seem like a tawdry undertaking, but falling in love with a place is like falling in love with a person, if you do so without first seeing their bad habits, it’s not really love. It’s just childlike infatuation.]


The book’s organization is straightforward. There are sixteen locales, and five books are discussed for each. I enjoyed Damrosch’s “syllabus.” The eighty books included a pleasant mix of works I’ve read, those I’ve been meaning to read, and [most importantly] those I’d missed altogether. Any source that reveals new reading material to me will definitely find favor.


The book starts in London (apropos of its titular connection to the Jules Verne novel) and moves through Europe, the Middle East, Africa, over through Asia, back around to Latin America, and finally to North America to conclude (as trips generally do) back at home.


The book is weighted heavily toward the literature side of the travel-literature nexus. That’s not a criticism, it’s just worth noting for travelers who aren’t avid readers of literary fiction and poetry, because they may find this book gets a bit deep in the literary weeds. (The sections don’t focus single-mindedly on the listed book, but meander through the author’s oeuvre and influences.) While many of the selections are indisputably excellent choices for traveling by book, others lack a connection that is readily apparent (e.g. the final book, "Lord of the Rings.") Again, I didn’t find that to be a negative as there was always something to be learned from the discussions, and – who knows - it may have even expanded my thinking.


If you’re a traveler / reader, you should definitely consider giving this book a read.

I love the premise of the book - a literary itinerary that one can use to safely take a global trip of sorts without having to leave one’s favorite reading nook and deal with all the anxieties and travel stresses that come with the ongoing pandemic. And so far I have enjoyed my world literature travels through David Damrosch's reviews quite a bit, though I confess that I have deviated a little from the route that the author has set up. Instead of reading the chapters sequentially, my first few "trips" so far have been to the geographical groupings that Damrosch has designed that personally interest me the most. However, seeing as how the author makes it quite clear upfront that the outlined path in the table of contents is very much based upon his own preferences, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal to personalize the order in which I absorb his thoughts on a diverse world-spanning collection of books.

The one criticism I would have to offer is how Damrosch occasionally includes a book’s ending as part of his exploration of it. Thankfully, so far those instances have been confined to books that I have coincidentally already read and enjoyed. However, I feel that eventually, it will happen to a work that I haven’t tackled just yet, and a potential literary trip will be spoiled before I even had much of a chance to even start it. However, if this does end up happening, the clear passion and glowing enthusiasm that Damrosch’s packs into every one of his individual overviews will still probably make me strongly consider putting a book on my to-read list even if I already know where that specific literary journey will end.

Overall, this has been an enjoyably different change of reading pace. Bibliophiles of all kinds of stripes will probably find something to enjoy here, and if not the whole worldwide literature tour, at least one or several excellent trips through some recommended titles.