Reading Around the World
I chose this project to answer the question “what do I read next?” I think it is really important to hear the stories of people who are not ourselves. I admire people who visit every country in the world, but that isn’t in the time or financial budget right now.
The English grad student in me is immediately triggered by this project – after all, “how do you choose the books without essentiallizing or Othering?” I acknowledge that every country has more than one person in it and therefore, every country has more than one story to tell. Additionally, not all literature gets translated, so, I am limited to that literature which has been transformed into the English language. Please, do this project yourself, and choose different books than I did.
That said, I do follow some guiding structure when choosing these books: 1) the author should be a native of the country and 2) the book should mostly take place within that country. Even so, I do not always follow that guiding structure. The purpose of this project is to open doors, broaden horizons, and in a small way, explore the world from my living room.
Part 2: Actually Getting Started
France: The Masterpiece by Emile Zola | No and Me by Delphine de Vigan | Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Belgium: The Lion of Flanders by Hendrik Conscience | War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans
Luxembourg: Your Heart of Ice is Hot as Vice by Guy Rewenig trans. Sandra Schmit
The Netherlands: In the Dutch Mountains by Cees Nooteboom | The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch
Germany: Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann | This House is Mine by Dörte Hansen
Denmark: Out of Africa by Karen Blixen | Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
Norway: Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen | My Struggle: Book 1 by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Svalbard: A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter
Sweden: Simon and the Oaks by Marianne Fredriksson
Finland: The Kalevala: The Epic of the Finnish People by Elias Lonnrot | Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
The Aland Island: Ice by Ulla-Lena Lundberg
Greece: The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles
South Africa: Burger’s Daughter by Nadine Gordimer
Afghanistan: No Good Men among the Living by Anand Gopal
Georgia: Flight from the USSR by Dato Turashvili
Estonia: Border State by Tonu Onnepalu
Latvia: With Dance Shoes in Siberian Snows by Sandra Kalniete | Doom 94 by Jānis Joņevs
Marshall Islands: Marshall Islands Legends and Stories by Daniel A. Kelin
Switzerland: Swiss Watching: Inside the Land of Milk and Money by Diccon Bewes | The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann | (OK i know these aren’t by swiss authors…but they came up in searches again and again and again)
India: Coming out as Dalit: A Memoir by Yashica Dutt | Samskara, A Rite for a Dead Man by U.R. Ananthamurthy
Ethiopia: The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
Reading with Ally 