Novels set on holiday

A SEARCH ON Amazon for “novels about holidays” returns thousands of results. That is hardly surprising. A holiday, with its promise of adventure or escape, is an excellent setting for a novel. Many of the authors below were inspired by their own. And the idea of reading about a fictional character’s holiday while on one yourself has an instinctive appeal. But how do you choose from all those options? Like a local guide who steers you away from the tourist traps, The Economist has chosen some of the best novels set on holiday. Be warned, though: these include intellectual and aesthetic adventures, not just easy beach reads.

In the title novella of this collection, published in 1912, Gustav von Aschenbach, a famous author, takes a working holiday to find inspiration. At a hotel on the Lido, a Venetian island, he encounters Tadzio, a beautiful Polish boy who is taking a beach holiday with his family. Von Aschenbach’s  increasing infatuation with Tadzio unmoors the widower: he abandons his fastidious routines and indulges in wild fantasies. A single smile from the boy sends him into rapture. Venice itself is sultry and dangerous. Von Aschenbach’s crush on the child provokes searching thoughts on love, art and mankind that refer not only to the beauty before him but to European literature stretching back to that of classical Greece. Thomas Mann based the story on his own experience of observing a boy in Venice, an episode that Colm Tóibín describes in his novel based on the author’s life.