Top 8 Books about Cambodia To Read Now
I went to Cambodia in 2025. Although it’s a cliché that people are friendly in the countries you go to, Cambodians are truly exceptionally friendly.
Now that we’re entering the holiday season, it’s an excellent time for reflection.
And what a year it’s been. I changed jobs, got married, and bought a house. Unsurprisingly, these changes made my long-standing goal of reading around 25 books a year a bit more challenging.
I still came close, though, and was lucky to discover a great number of outstanding reads. Several of them earned a spot among my best fiction books 2025, while a few nonfiction titles also made the list.
Some of those nonfiction books are so adventurous that they read better than the average novel, while several fictional works offer rich insight into historical contexts and real-world experiences.
But let’s not keep you any longer. Here are my top 10 books of 2025.
In October this year, I went on a family trip to Thailand, which was an excellent opportunity to start reading Thai books.
The first book I picked up was Sightseeing (2005), a debut collection of short stories by Thai-American author Rattawut Lapcharoensap. It was a pleasant surprise that quickly found a place among my best fiction books 2025.
The stories vividly capture growing up in Thailand amid its rapid changes and increasing tourism, exploring themes of identity, nostalgia, and cultural clashes. Lapcharoensap offers intimate insights into daily Thai life, and I felt myself being pulled into the stories immediately, immersing myself in Rattawut’s world.
I love the idea of seeing a city as a friend or partner.
Some you visit once in a while, others you date for a few years, until you find your true love, settle down, and buy a house.
The concept isn’t that strange. I’ve heard many people say, “Oh, I love New York.” “I Love Paris.”
But is it true love? Do you love that city, including all its flaws? Or is it like dating a super good-looking model that you think you love, but don’t know yet?
It all starts with getting to know each other, learning about each other’s history and personality.
Based on that idea, I wrote a new way to experience Barcelona.
So, when I visited Barcelona in June, I decided to follow my own advice: I visited the Santa Maria del Mar and read the novel The Cathedral of the Sea.
Although the cathedral’s construction plays a central role in the book, at its heart, it’s a personal story about a boy named Arnau and his father fleeing the hardships of rural Catalonia in search of freedom in Barcelona.
You’re instantly catapulted into 14th-century Catalonia, ruled by the church, lords, and kings—as you follow Arnau’s journey from rags to riches.
I loved reading The World We Saw Burning by Peruvian author Renato Cisneros.
It combines two stories: a Peruvian journalist returning to Madrid after a divorce, and a young Peruvian who leaves for the U.S. to become a pilot in World War II.
It’s an easy, engaging read, but emotionally layered, especially in its portrayal of displacement, migration, and the challenges of living between countries. The novel reflects on identity and belonging in ways that are likely relatable to anyone residing outside their birthplace.
The kings of Thailand, who diplomatically avoided colonization, remained the country’s sole rulers until 1932.
Since then, power has shifted between the king, elected civilians, and the military — a mix that has included protests and several coups.
Despite Thailand’s massive tourism industry, many visitors know almost nothing about this political history, which is why A Good True Thai is such an interesting read.
Available in Thai bookstores, but not without controversy, the book was inspired by student leader Seksan Prasertkul and poet Chiranan Pitpreecha. It follows three friends from different social backgrounds who get pulled into the 1973 student protests.
It’s one of the best fiction books 2025 and a fascinating window into Thai politics.
A friend added Death of Beautiful Roebucks (also a film) to his Goodreads, and soon after, I came across a glowing review in the paper. That weekend, I stumbled upon the collection in a bookstore and picked it up.
Ota Pavel’s short stories — sadly, not all available in English — are a remarkable blend of the mundane and the adventurous, the fun and the heavy, maintaining lightness and humor even when writing about the awful things his family endured during the Holocaust.
If I were a bookstore, I’d offer a money-back guarantee. I’m almost certain you won’t regret buying it.
If you can’t find the English translation, however, have a look at his other collection of short stories, How I Came To Know Fish. It seems to have a similar style and equally raving reviews.
Imagine living with indigenous tribes in the Amazon forest. You’d be immersed in their culture, hunting together and learning about their plants.
That’s basically Wade Davis’ job as a Harvard ethnobotanist.
In One River, he shares his experiences and those of two of Harvard’s most famous Ethnobotanists, including Richard Evan Schultes. Schultes is considered the father of ethnobotany, who disappeared into the Amazon rainforest for 12 years to study with indigenous tribes. Moreover, he was the first non-native individual to examine ayahuasca academically.
He’s also a key figure in The Embrace of the Serpent, one of the best Colombian movies ever made.
I read this book at the start of the year and still look back fondly at it—definitely one of the best books of 2025.
Although Meditation for Mortals initially felt a bit self-helpy, it turned out to be quite the opposite. Oliver Burkeman reminds us that we’re all normal humans, worthy of love, even if we’re not the next Zuckerberg.
Still, it’s packed with thoughtful insights. Some of my favorites were:
Meditation for Mortals is definitely one of those books worth rereading in 2026.
There’s a common myth that people who work in finance understand how the economy works, and everyone else doesn’t.
The reality is that very few people truly grasp the complex system—that’s why successful investors like Warren Buffett are so rare.
If you’d like to understand the fundamentals of capitalism and how it started, I highly recommend Talking to My Daughter About the Economy by ex-Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.
Varoufakis was Greece’s finance minister during the debt crisis (which he also wrote a book about). He’s a sharp, original thinker with many interesting perspectives on our economic and political systems.
I’m enthusiastic about everything I share in my newsletter, but A Fortune-Teller Told Me instantly became one of my all-time favorites and easily earns a spot on my list of best novels ever.
And I’m clearly not alone; more than 30 years after its release, it still holds an impressive 4.5/5 on Goodreads, based on nearly 9,000 reviews.
It’s the true story of an Italian journalist living in Asia who commits to a year without flying after a Hong Kong fortune-teller warned him 17 years earlier. It’s a decision that changes his life.
During that year, he visits many fortune tellers across Asia, which opened my eyes to how influential they were (and maybe still are). And as a journalist, he alternates between his personal stories and very insightful sections on Asia’s history.
If I didn’t know it was a true story, it could easily be one of my best fiction books of 2025.
Between 1975 and 1979, Cambodia experienced one of the worst genocides in modern history under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, killing around 2 million people, roughly 20–25% of the population.
Visiting the prison S21, where 20,000 people were brought and tortured (only seven survived), and the Killing Fields, where so many were executed, made an incredible impact. To learn more, I read Stay Alive My Son by Pin Yathay.
As an intellectual who had worked for the overthrown government, he was a target for the Khmer Rouge. Pin shares how everyone was evacuated from the capital under false pretences, only to spend years working themselves to exhaustion. Seeing his family die one by one, he faced the impossible choice between staying with his son and almost certainly dying, or taking a desperate risk to flee to Thailand.
It’s one of the 2025 books that stayed with me the most, and it’s definitely one of the best books about Cambodia.
I surprised myself this year with a lot of non-fiction books in my top 10, even though many of these stories were so adventurous they could also easily fall in the best fiction books 2025 category.
What were your best books 2025?
Share your favorite in the comments!
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I went to Cambodia in 2025. Although it’s a cliché that people are friendly in the countries you go to, Cambodians are truly exceptionally friendly.
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