Read Your Way Through Kerala

In anticipation of the unique and delectable cuisine that awaits you in your travels, read “The Kerala Kitchen,” by Lathika George: a colorful travelogue, memoir and cookbook.

There’s a good chance your inbound flight will connect via Dubai or Doha, because these hubs serve the diaspora with daily flights to Calicut, Cochin or Trivandrum — cities whose names have been restored to the originals, Kozhikode, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram. Whatever your route, do read “Goat Days,” by Benyamin, which captures the Keralite dream of making a fortune in the Gulf even if that means taking on crippling debt to pay the broker who arranges the visa and the required Arab sponsor. This comic-tragic novel reminds readers that too often the Gulf dream becomes a nightmare of exploitation, deprivation and prolonged separation from family.

I plan to drive from the north toward the beaches of Kovalam in the south. Any specific books for this itinerary?

Starting in Kozhikode (once known as Calicut) is fitting because it’s where Vasco da Gama landed. Nigel Cliff’s “Holy War: How Vasco da Gama’s Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations” is a detailed account of what was then the longest ocean voyage ever. While in Kozhikode, take a side trip to the vast estates in Wayanad, where some of the grand colonial bungalows have become tourist home-stays or resorts.

Heading south will bring you to Kochi (Cochin), really a conglomeration of islands that includes Ernakulam, Mattancherry, Fort Kochi (Fort Cochin), Willingdon Island, Vypin Island and Gundu Island. You’ll see traces of the Portuguese, Dutch and British; read about them in Tanya Abraham’s “Fort Cochin: History and Untold Stories.”

A walk through Mattancherry is a must for great antique stores. You’ll pass the synagogue, the last vestige of a once thriving Jewish community, which is featured in Salman Rushdie’s brilliantly inventive “The Moor’s Last Sigh.”

Take the novel “Litanies of Dutch Battery,” by N. S. Madhavan, with you to the storied Taj Malabar hotel on Willingdon Island; the food is the best, as is the view of the broad sea channel that runs between Vypin Island and Fort Kochi, then to the Arabian Sea. The novel, translated from Malayalam and narrated by Edwina Theresa Irene Maria Anne Margarita Jessica, a girl from a Kerala Catholic community, is a comic romp through history, family, humor, faith and politics.

In the giant spice warehouses, you’ll…