As August turns into September, I’m putting the finishing touches to a new feature that I’ll be introducing to this site later this week.
Those of you who follow BookerTalk will know that I’m interested in expanding my knowledge of literature from outside the western societies that seem to predominate in literature. My World in Literature challenge is to read novels by authors from 50 different countries within five years. I started earlier this year by focusing on countries along the Equator and the Prime Meridian. I’ve now completed eight countries (finishing the most recent one from Ghana just this morning).
Deciding which novelists to read has been fun with many recommendations coming from different parts of the world. So I’ve decided to spread some of the wealth of that knowledge with you and hopefully help you to expand your own reading horizons via a new feature I’ve called The View from Here.
The idea is to ask bloggers from around the world to give an insider’s view of the literary scene in their country. So if you’ve ever wanted to know what people like to read in Sri Lanka, the difference between American and Canadian literature, what books are cooking in Indonesia or whether there is more to Scandinavian literature than Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell, The View from Here , will give you the answers.
If you’re interested in being featured, please let me know – just leave a comment with some info about the country on which you can provide some perspectives. And if you happen to know of any other bloggers who really should be featured, feel free to alert them and get them to contact me.