Top ten cultural journeys

Susheila Nasta is the editor and founder of Wasafiri magazine, which marks its 25th anniversary this month. "Wasafiri," the Kiswahili word for travellers, captures the magazine's vision to focus on writing as a form of "cultural travelling."

For the Guardian, she named a top ten list of "books that take her on a globe-spanning, literary adventure." One title on the list:

Austerlitz by WG Sebald

As one of the Kindertransport children, five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz arrives in Britain in 1939 to live with foster parents in Wales. All conscious memory of his previous life is obliterated. As a story about loss and redemption, trauma, repression and memory, this poignant narrative leads us through a maze of uncanny dialogues. An inconsolable Holocaust history, this is a major chronicle of our times.

Read about the other books on the list.

Austerlitz is among the top ten works of literature according to Peter Carey.

--Marshal Zeringue