If you like easy reading I would recommend Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, or American Gods by the same author also. For something harder and somewhat drier I think the Lesser evil by Michael Ignatieff is great mind food.

And one of my favourite authors is Rafik Schami whose stories mostly play in the middle east (Damaskus), and who are something in between fiction and non-fiction, in a unexcited fairy rale kind of way. But I am not sure whether he was translated to English, and how that translation caught is style.