New Chapters: Tasmina Perry

Tasmina Perry is the internationally bestselling author of over 20 novels, which have been translated into 25 languages. She lives in London with her husband, son and extensive shoe collection.  Here are her favourite holiday reads… 

I’ve read so many summery, escapist books over the years, but I always know the
ones that I truly love because they inspire me to go to the places where they were set.  

I thought my backpacking days were behind me until I re-read The Beach over Christmas. My husband and I were recent empty-nesters so I just booked two flights
to Bangkok in January. Those nineties back-packer books are just great – William Sutcliffe’s Are You Experienced is also excellent. I love the spirit and idealism of youth and the nostalgia you feel reading them years later, revisiting a simpler, pre-internet 
time. 

I always go back to E.M. Forster’s A Room With a View wherever I am in the world. George throwing Lucy’s Baedeker away is so symbolic to me about the beauty of travel – the freedom it gives us, the invitation to seek out wonder and the importance of curiosity and adventure. 

And I’ve read Shirley Conran’s Lace on holiday more times than I can remember. It’s
just so much fun. I’m currently writing a book set in the Swiss Alps just to channel the hot chocolate and fondue vibes when the four girls were at L’Hirondelle. 

Not much happens in The Summer Book by Tove Janssen – a slim novel about a young girl and her granny spending the summer together on a quiet Finnish island. But it’s not about nothing, it’s about everything – love and loss but most of all, it’s 
about living. 

You can pre-order Tasmina’s upcoming novel, Seven Nights In St Tropez, here.