Eothen

In 1834 and 1835 the young Alexander Kinglake travelled out of Europe into the Ottoman lands: from Belgrade to Constantinople, on to Smyrna and Cyprus, through Lebanon, Galilee and Jerusalem to Gaza, across the desert to Cairo, where he stayed through an outbreak of plague, and back by way of Damascus. Instead of a guidebook he wrote a book of impressions: the silence of the desert, his Bedouin guides, a famous visit to the eccentric Lady Hester Stanhope in her mountain retreat, the fear in plague-stricken Cairo and the small comedies of travel.

Published in 1844 under a Greek title meaning from the East, the book became a model for Victorian travel writing; its picture of the region is lively and often affectionate, though it carries the assumptions of an Englishman of its age. Seven LibriVox volunteers read it in about eight and a half hours.