Reading List · Lisanne Swart
Authors Like
Stewart walked over 500 miles solo across Afghanistan just weeks after the Taliban’s fall, then went on to govern provinces in Iraq, sit in the British cabinet, and write with unusual candor about all of it. This list is for readers who want more of that specific combination: genuine physical risk paired with real historical and political depth, from writers who refuse to reduce the places and systems they cover to simple narratives.
By Lisanne Swart · 6 authors · Adventure & Political Nonfiction · Updated August 2026
Colin Thubron
Thubron has spent decades traveling through the most remote and politically sensitive regions of Central Asia, Siberia, and China, combining genuine physical endurance with deep historical and linguistic knowledge of the places he covers.
The closest peer in combining scholarly depth with physical travel risk — both writers refuse to let danger substitute for actual understanding of a region’s history and culture.
Freya Stark
Stark traveled alone through some of the most remote and dangerous parts of the Middle East in the early-to-mid 20th century, combining physical daring with genuine scholarly engagement with Arabic language and Islamic culture, decades before it was common for Western travelers, let alone women, to do so.
An important historical precursor to Stewart’s combination of solo physical risk and deep regional knowledge, working similar territory generations earlier.
Robert Kaplan
Kaplan combines extensive on-the-ground travel through politically unstable regions with serious historical and geopolitical analysis, sharing Stewart’s conviction that understanding a place requires both physical presence and intellectual depth.
A useful American counterpart — similarly willing to travel into genuinely unstable regions while insisting on rigorous historical framing rather than adventure for its own sake.
Anand Gopal
Gopal spent years reporting from inside war-torn Afghanistan for No Good Men Among the Living, sharing Stewart’s firsthand, ground-level understanding of a country most Western commentary discusses from a distance.
Covers the same country and period as The Places in Between from a different angle — direct combat-adjacent reporting rather than a solo walk, but with the same commitment to on-the-ground nuance.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City covers the same post-invasion Iraq reconstruction period Stewart lived through firsthand in Occupational Hazards, from the perspective of an embedded journalist covering the Green Zone.
A useful companion read to Occupational Hazards — the same chaotic reconstruction period, seen from journalism rather than direct governance.
Ryszard Kapuściński
Kapuściński spent decades reporting from collapsing regimes and revolutions across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, sharing Stewart’s combination of genuine physical risk and deep, literary attention to the political and historical forces at play.
A broader geographic and historical scope than Stewart, but the same underlying refusal to reduce a country’s crisis to a simple, easily digestible narrative.
Where to start if you loved Rory Stewart
If you want the closest travel-writing peer, then read Colin Thubron.
Decades of remote Central Asian travel paired with real scholarly depth.
If you want an earlier historical precursor, then read Freya Stark.
Solo travel through the Middle East decades before it was common, with the same combination of daring and depth.
If you want the same country from another angle, then read Anand Gopal.
No Good Men Among the Living covers Afghanistan with the same ground-level nuance.
If you want his own work first, then start with his books.
My complete guide to Rory Stewart’s own books is the place to begin.
If you want more of this tradition, then keep exploring it.
My best adventure and travel books list has the natural successors.
Frequently asked questions about authors like Rory Stewart
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