Where do you want to go today?

Every morning, I wake up in India. In Mumbai, to be precise. It's all the work of the fantastic Aravind Adiga and his Last Man in Tower, which, along with The White Tiger, is the very definition of transportive fiction.

Can't afford the time or cost of an exotic holiday? Try these:

• Southern states USA: anything by Truman Capote
• 1940s Spain: Fabled Shore by Rose Macaulay
• Pre-commercialisation Corfu: Prospero's Cell by Lawrence Durrell
• Contemporary American West: The Last Cowboy, by Jane Kramer
• 1940s Alexandria, Egypt: The Alexandria Quartet, by Lawrence Durrell
• Occupied Norway in WWII: The Moon is Down, by John Steinbeck
• Japan, from 1963 to the 1980s: Lost Japan, by Alex Kerr

Of course, if you just want to be lost at sea somewhere warm, there's always The Life of Pi. But I don't need to tell you how to suck eggs, right?