World Of Literature Project

47 Countries Completed. 3 Remaining

Goal: Read books by authors from 50 different countries of the world.

Progress update: October 2021: 47 countries completed.

Why A World of Literature Project?

We live in an increasingly global world. We’re connected by phone, Internet, snail mail, newspapers, magazines, television. Technology has enabled me to ‘meet’ many fellow book enthusiasts from all parts of the world, sharing our love of literature through blogs, Library Thing and GoodReads. I’ve read hundreds of books in my lifetime and yet I feel my reading has been somewhat limited. I know little about the literature of South America for example, have barely touched the surface with China and Africa.

I kicked off this project in 2013 with the idea of focusing initially on reading books from countries along the Equator and countries along the Prime Meridian.  Together that gave me a list 21 countries with an appealing mix of cultures, from Asia to Africa and Western Europe.

Problem was that there are so few books available from some countries or if they do exist, they have not been translated into English. France was an easy one to tick off and I found a few options from the Congo but Burkina Faso and Mali have proved to be stumbling blocks. So I’ve had to go further afield. I could have made life easier if I had chosen books set in each country but I went for the more difficult set of rules….

My Guiding Principle

I’m trying to keep this simple and not tie myself down with too many “rules”. But I did feel the need to set some kind of boundaries.

So I have just one guiding principle which is that this is a project about reading indigenous authors. I’m not interested in books that are simply set in a particular country. I want books written by people who live and/or work in a country so I can get an insider’s perspective on its culture, language, way of life.

That does present me with a few challenges. Do I include authors who have been born in a country but now live elsewhere? What if they were born in country A but have lived most of their lives in country B? How about second generation authors; they might never lived in China themselves, for example but through their parents and networks have a strong cultural affinity to that location?

There’s perfect answer and I suspect I’m going to have to use a lot of judgement. If an author left the country of their birth when they were a very small child and have never returned (or only for a short visit) then I’m not going to classify them as being from that country. I’m probably going to get some decisions wrong but in the scheme of things that doesn’t matter too much.

The table below will show you what I’ve read so far but if you like something more visual, take a look at my Google Map 

Country	Title	Author	Date read
Australia	The Snow Kimono	Mark Henshaw	August 2014
Australia	The Sound of One Hand Clapping	Richard Flanagan	November 2020
Afghanistan	And the Mountains Echoed	Khaled Hosseini	May 2013
Algeria	Memory in the Flesh	Ahlam Mosteghanemi	August 2013
Algeria	The Swallows of Kabul	Yasmina Khadra	February 2017
Austria	A Whole Life	Robert Seethaler	July 2019
Belgium	Fear and Trembling	Amelie Nothomb.	June 2016
Brazil	Dom Casmurro	Joachim Maria Machado de Assis	Aug 2011
Burkina Faso	The Parachute Drop	Norbert Zongo	July 2014
Canada	Dear Life	Alice Munro	Jan 2014
Chile	The Infinite Plan	Isabelle Allende	June 2014
China	Kinder Than Solitude	Yiyun Li	March 2018
China	The Chilli Bean Past Clan	Yan Ge	June 2018
Colombia	The Armies	Evelio Rosero Diago	Feb 2013
Croatia	Hotel Tito	Ivana Simić Bodrožić	July 2019
Cuba	The German Girl	Armando Lucas Correa	July 2018
Czechoslovakia	Miss Silver's Past	Josef Škvorecký	May 2017
Democratic Republic of The Congo	Full Circle	Frederick Yamusangie	Jan 2014
Denmark	The Murder of Halland	Pia Juul	Dec 2016
Finland	White Hunger	Aki Ollikainen	May 2015
France	Old Goriot	Balzac	Sept 2015
Germany	The Search for Christa T	Christa Wolf	Sept 2015
Ghana	Wife of the Gods	Kwei Quartery	Sept 2013
Ghana	Homegoing	Yaa Gyasi	Dec 2017
Guadeloupe	The Tree of Life	Maryse Conde	July 2016
Holland/the Netherlands	The Evenings	Gerard Reve	Read 2017
Hungary	Satantango	Laslo Krasznahorkai	February 2014
India	The Glass Palace	Amitav Ghosh	March 2014
Indonesia	The Book of Jakarta	Maesy Ang and Teddy W. Kusuma	January 2021
Ireland	The Spinning Heart	Donal Ryan	July 2014
Ireland	History of the Rain	Niall Williams	Sept 2014
Israel	A Man Lies Dreaming	Lavie Tidhar	2015
Israel	Waking Lions	Ayelet Gundar-goshen	2017
Italy	Inspector Montelbano	Andrea Camilleri	Sept 2014
Ivory Coast	In The Company of Men	Véronique Tadjo	August 2021
Jamaica	The Long Song	Andrea Levy	August 2019
Japan	The Housekeeper and The Professor	Yoko Ogawa	July 2016
Japan	After The Banquet	Yukio Mishima	Dec 2013
Kenya	Petals of Blood	Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o	Nov 2013
Mexico	Signs Preceding The End Of The World	Yuri Herrera	Oct 2021
Nigeria	Americanah	Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie	May 2014
New Zealand	The Luminaries	Eleanor Catton	July 2014
New Zealand	The Bone People	Keri Hulme	April 2014
North Korea	In Order To Live	Yeonmi Park	June 2020
Norway	Love	Hanne Ørstavik	July 2020
Norway	The Blue Room	Hanne Ørstavik	Dec 2016
Pakistan	The Reluctant Fundamentalist	Mohsin Hamid	Jan 2014
Pakistan	The Holy Woman	Qaisra Shahraz	Aug 2014
Republic of the Congo	Broken Glass	Alain Mabanckou	Jan 2013
Rwanda	The Barefoot Woman	Scholastique Mukasonga.	Sept 2019
Somalia	Nurradin Farah	From a Crooked Rib	April 2014
South Africa	Cry the Beloved Country	Alan Paton	April 2011
South Africa	The Whale Caller	Zakes Mda	June 2018
South Korea	The Vegetarian	Hang Kang	June 2017
South Korea	Please Look After Mom	Shin Kyong-sook	Dec 2014
Switzerland	Twelve Nights	Urs Faes	Feb 2021
Turkey	10 Minutes, 38 Seconds In This Strange World	Elif Shafak	Oct 2020
Vietnam	The Mountains Sing	Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai	Aug 2021
Zimbabwe	We Need New Names	NoViolet Bulawayo	April 2015

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