If you’re anything like us, you might carry lofty ideas of chucking War & Peace in your suitcase and finishing it off on holiday (only 1351 pages to go…) Take it from us: Save yourself the baggage allowance and indulge your inner bookworm before you set off instead.

Picking up a couple of books (or watching a film or two!) is a nifty little way to immerse yourself in a destination before you get there, and helps you hit the ground running as soon as you land. So if you’re headed to the City of Superlatives soon, we’ve scoured the shelves to find you some required reading (don’t worry, we won’t check 😉) – here’s a list of books set in Dubai we reckon you should get dug into. Happy reading.

Welcome to The Dog, a story of alienation, heartbreak, and existential floundering, set against the glittering mirage of Dubai.

After a soul-crushing breakup with his long-term girlfriend, our unnamed protagonist—let’s call him “Guy Who Can’t Catch a Break”—flees New York for the dazzling dystopia of Dubai. Here, amid towering skyscrapers and lavish excess, he lands a peculiar gig as “family officer” (read: glorified errand boy) for the fabulously wealthy and whimsically tyrannical Batros family. Things go downhill quickly, as our hero finds himself perpetually stuck in “the doghouse”—a state of eternal guilt and blame, whether he’s sending emails, scuba diving, or, heaven forbid, using the bathroom.

What follows is a razor-sharp, darkly comic tale of modern humanity’s moral tailspin. With Joseph O’Neill’s trademark eloquence, empathy, and biting wit, The Dog serves up a hilariously bleak fable for our globalized, hyper-connected, soul-crushing age.

James Bond as you’ve never seen him before… except, you know, still impossibly cool, armed to the teeth, and tangled up with a beautiful woman. A Night Action alert (yes, it’s as dramatic as it sounds) yanks Bond away from his dinner date to chase down an “electronic whisper.” What’s on the line? Just a potential catastrophe with thousands of casualties and British interests in peril. No biggie.

This isn’t your granddad’s Bond. Our hero, now in his early thirties and already a grizzled Afghan War vet, has signed up with a brand-new, super-secret organization—so secret, it’s not even on MI5 or MI6’s Christmas card list. Their mission? Protect the Realm at all costs, operating so far off the books, they might as well be in another library.

Armed with his signature license to kill, Bond is given carte blanche (fancy French for “do whatever the hell you want”) to tackle a globe-trotting, high-stakes mission. Think gadgets, danger, and of course, some suave one-liners – because no apocalypse is complete without Bond making it look good.

Boom town. Modern marvel. Commercial hub. Where the Middle East shakes hands with the wealthy West, and tourists rub shoulders with ex-pats. Adored by Instagram influencers, Dubai has gone from a patch of sand to a glittering empire in just thirty years. Impressive? Sure. Surreal? Absolutely.

But how did this Vegas-on-the-Gulf spring up so quickly? And more importantly—can it last? Will the sands eventually reclaim their turf, or is this glittering oasis here to stay?

Armed with curiosity and a hefty dose of scepticism, Joe Bennett heads off to investigate. The question is: will Dubai dazzle him, or will he leave wondering if it’s all just smoke and (literal) mirrors?

In the 1950s, Dubai was home to a few thousand souls. They picked dates, dove for pearls, or traded with Iran and India on wooden dhows.

Fast forward to today, and Dubai has hit the jackpot: think Las Vegas without the slot machines. Until recently, it was the fastest-growing city in the world, its skyline erupting with shimmering skyscrapers, while at ground level, construction crews toiled around the clock to keep the dream alive. The economy outpaced China’s, and Dubai somehow managed to attract more tourists than all of India.

It’s one of the safest places on Earth, where gilded life reaches peak excess: celebrities frolic in opulent splendour, and the streets are so clogged with supercars that Porsche-on-Porsche collisions barely raise an eyebrow.

Dubai isn’t just a city – it’s a metaphor for the future: bold, brash, shiny, and just a little bit unsettling. Welcome to the sheikhdom that tells its story louder, glossier, and with a touch more gold than anyone else.

Not got those tickets yet? Here’s some cheap flights to Dubai