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Literary Trails

I can think of dozens of reasons to travel. Certainly a terrific excuse is to visit the site where favorite books take place.

The summer I was eight, we spent eight weeks in Germany so that my dad could work on his German. On weekends, we traveled. The weekend we went to Amsterdam, we got to visit Anne Frank's house. At that time, you could still ascend the mysterious staircase hidden behind the bookcase. Fascinating!

In college I made a different literary pilgrimage--to Spain. Not only had I read Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon, but I'd read and reread The Sun Also Rises. I managed to visit Pamplona during the San Fermines, the July festival celebrates. I didn't get up early enough to see the running of the bulls, though. Instead I joined the happy partiers in the plazas! 

In graduate school, I was off to Alexandria, Egypt, to trace Darley through his adopted city (from Lawrence Durrell's Justine). I visited poet C.P. Cavafy's flat for added inspiration.

But after teaching John Grisham's ​The Broker for the Arizona in Italy program, I knew I had to go back to Bologna and trace the steps of his protagonist. I even had to go to Treviso. Really, there is hardly any better excuse for travel--other than to create settings for your own novels, of course!

For a quick virtual tour, join me on the literary trail of:

John Grisham
W.B. Yeats
J.R.R. Tolkien




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