5) Burma Chronicles, by Guy Delisle

A recently published graphic chronicle of cartoonist Guy Delisle’s year in Burma with his wife (who works for Médécins Sans Frontières) and their baby son. It’s a country I know much less about than I would like. Without being patronising, Delisle captures a lot of fascinating moments – the absurdity of censorship and surveillance, the Christian heroin-addicted Kachins of the north, a stay in a monastery. He also captures a lot of the experiences of just being an expatriate with a small child which I’m much more familiar with – the admiration of locals for your foreign baby, the desperate shopping trips across the border to the neighbouring more developed capital city. A very good book; I believe Delisle has done a couple more about China and North Korea, and will look out for them.