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"Around The World" Reading Challenge!


Nollaig

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*This thread is dedicated to a particular reading challenge which involves is reading (at least) one book by an author from each of the 198 countries in the world.

*This post contains the list of 198 countries, everybody is welcome to participate and everybody is actively encouraged to suggest books from any country to add to the list!

*I'll update the countries as we receive suggestions, up to a maximum of five books per country.

Good luck! :lol:

 

1. Afghanistan - [" A thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini] ["The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini] ["A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear" - Atiq Rahimi]

2. Albania - ["Chronical in Stone" by Ismail Kadare]

3. Algeria - [ "The Attack" - Yasmina Khadra] ["The Last Summer Of Reason" - Tahar Djaout] ["The Outsider" - Albert Camus]

4. Andorra - ["Andorra" - Mich

Edited by Nollaig
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100. Liberia

101. Libya - ["In The Country of Men" - Hisham Matar] ["Gold Dust" - Ibrahim al-Koni]

102. Liechtenstein

103. Lithuania

104. Luxembourg

105. Macedonia

106. Madagascar

107. Malawi - ["The Last of the Sweet Bananas" - Jack Mapanje]

108. Malaysia - ["Evening Is The Whole Day" - Preeta Samarasan]

109. Maldives

110. Mali - ["Sundiata: Epic Of Old Mali" - D.T. Niane]

111. Malta

112. Marshall Islands

113. Mauritania

114. Mauritius

115. Mexico - [" Like Water For Chocolate" - Laura Esquivel] ["Pedro Paramo" - Juan Rulfo]

116. Micronesia

117. Moldova

118. Monaco

119. Mongolia - ["The Blue Sky" - Galsan Tschinag]

120. Montenegro

121. Morocco - ["A Life Full Of Holes" - Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi] ["Hope And Other Dangerous Pursuits" - Laila Lalami] ["Stolen Lives: Twenty Years In A Desert Jail" - Malika Oufkir] ["This Blinding Absence Of Light" - Tahar Ben Jelloun]

122. Mozambique - ["A River Called Time" - Mia Couto] ["Sleepwalking Land" - Mia Couto]

123. Namibia - ["The Purple Violet of Oshaantu" - Neshani Andreas]

124. Nauru

125. Nepal - ["The Guru of Love" - Samrat Upadhyay]

126. Netherlands (The) - ["The Discovery of Heaven: A Novel" - Harry Mulisch] ["In Babylon" - Marcel M

Edited by lexiepiper
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Oooooh, Romania is in there too :D :D

 

I'm so curious what book will get chosen (I've no idea which of the Romanian writers have been translated into English, I'm guessing not very many) (speaking of translation, at one point I begun translating myself a book I very much liked but got bored after a few pages -- so if you really really find yourselves with no Romanian author to read, I can always (try and) finish my translation :D :D )

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http://www.librarything.com/groups/readinggloballyficti#forums

 

Courtesy of Ceinwenn heres a list of global books for you to have a look through if you like.

If anyone sees anything interesting be sure to give it a mention!

 

Kaye: If you know of any particularly good, well-known Romanian books, you could suggest them all the same and we could look for translations.

 

*Also list is updated now.

I also added two more Irish books, one a traditional culture/society one (figure since we're reading countries we might as well have some culture =P)

I also added two detective fiction books from a bestselling Icelandic author, which my Icelandic friend suggested ^__^

I also have a friend in Denmark, I'll ask her for suggestions too.

Edited by Nollaig
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A mixture of books I've read/ want to read:

 

14. Bangladesh: Muhammad Yunus - Creating a World Without Poverty (autobiography)

37. China: Dai Sijie - Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Ha Jin - Waiting

53. Egypt: Alaa Al Aswany - The Yacoubian Building, Naguib Mahfouz - The Cairo Trilogy

78. India: R.K. Narayan - A Malgudi Omnibus, Vikas Swarup - Q&A, Manohar Malgonkar - A Bend in the Gange, Salman Rushdie...

80. Iran: Marjane Satrapi - Persepolis (graphic novel)

84. Italy: Donna Leon - Brunetti crime novel series, Italo Calvino - The Baron in the Trees

86. Japan: Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go

89. Kenya: Ngugi Wa Thiong'O - A Grain of Wheat

130. Nigeria: Buchi Emecheta - Second Class Citizen

139. Peru: Mario Vargas Llosa - Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

156. Serbia: Ivo Andric - The Bridge over the Drina

 

This challenge looks great and I might take it on someday but at the moment I want to keep all freedom in my choice of books. Good luck!

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Brilliant, I have subscribed to this thread so it will be easy to find, great job guys. (was 3am when I logged off)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez seems to be the main man in Colombia. I just bought

'One Hundred Years of Solitude'and 'Love In The Time Of Cholera'. They are popular I know, I'm catching up.

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I've now added the following countries and books, just thought I'd note it here so people can see the new additions.

 

Greece - ["The Last Temptation of Christ "] - Nikos Kazantzakis

South Africa - ["Disgrace" - J. M. Coetzee]

China - ["Chinese Cinderella" - Adeline Yen Mah]

France - ["Madame Bovary" - Gustave Flaubert]

Russia - ["Lolita" - Vladimir Nabokov] ["Crime and Punishment" - Fyodor Dostoevsky]

Norway - ["Growth of the Soil" - Knut Hamsun] (nobel prize winning book)

Germany - ["The Glass Bead Game" - Hermann Hesse]

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How about Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart for Nigeria?

 

You already have some for India, but I would also recommend Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, one of my favorites.

 

For South Africa, there's Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying, which is another fabulous work.

 

For Sweden, there's Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking.

 

Those are the ones that come to mind immediately. Hope this helps!

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Here's what I got from a few hours of research yesterday :D

 

3. Algeria - ["The Last Summer Of Reason" - Tahar Djaout]

6. Antigua - ["Annie John" - Jamaica Kincaid]

7. Argentina - ["The Motorcycle Diaries" - Ernesto Che Guevara]

9. Australia - ["Secret Scribbled Notebooks" - Joanne Horniman] ["Temple" - Matthew Reilly] ["The Idea Of Perfection" - Kate Grenville]

11. Azerbaijan - ["Ali And Nino: A Love Story" - Kurban Said]

24. Brazil - ["By The River Piedra, I Sat Down And Wept" - Paulo Coelho] ["The Alchemist" - Paulo Coelho] ["The Lost Manuscript" - Rubem Fonseca]

32. Canada - ["River Of The Broken-Hearted" - David Adams Richards]

36. Chile - ["The Savage Detectives" - Roberto Bola

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Woah, you crazy crazy research girl O.o

 

I feel like I'm not researching enough now :D

 

I'll start working on those now, thats fantastic. :D

 

EDIT: and you even formatted them properly so they match what I've done! That makes my job SO much easier! Thank you! :D

 

SECOND EDIT: My god. Inkheart. Thats one of my favourite trilogies ever, and I didn't think of it. :D

Edited by Nollaig
Lexie is a legend, and I am a tool. =D
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Ooooh lovely Chimera, thanks :D

 

I'm gonna have a look through that in a minute.

 

Added:

Belgium: ["The Sorrow of Belgium" - Hugo Claus]

Brazil: ["Dom Casmurro" - Machado de Assis]

Iceland: ["Independent People" - Halldor Laxness]

Rwanda: ["Left to Tell" - Imaculee Ilibigiza]

Sudan: ["The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur" - Daoud Hari]

Turkey: ["The 'person of dubious parentage' of Istanbul" - Elif Shafak]

Wales: ["Resistance" - Owen Sheers]

Uruguay: ["The Shipyard" - Juan Carlos Onetti]

Edited by Nollaig
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Chimera's link there raises an interesting question - I just started going through it, but a lot of the books those people chose are books about countries, not just FROM countries, so that the readers get some cultural idea of the country the book is set in.

 

Theres quite a few countries we don't have, not written by authors of those countries, but explicitly set in those countries.

 

Should we include them or not?

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Theres quite a few countries we don't have, not written by authors of those countries, but explicitly set in those countries.

 

Should we include them or not?

 

Oh, hadnt noticed that difference.

 

I think the aim isnt the same. When reading authors from different countries you discover different perspectives, different styles, different ways of seeing things and telling stories. And you give as much credit to authors from different origins

 

When you read about a country you vary the themes, the location... but a british author writing about britain or china might have a similar perspective on things. It's still a great way of learning about the country though (if the author knows it well enough...).

 

The best of course, would be to read books written by a local author about the country :D

 

It's a question of choice really. What are you looking for in this challenge?

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Well we can try at least to get as many countries as possible and if we have to resort to books ABOUT countries, I guess thats better than nothing.

 

Lexie - I need to ask you about altering your first post on this thread. Its the second post in the thread (after my main one.) I've run out of characters in the first post, so what I wanted to ask was, would you mind pasting half the list of countries in your post? Otherwise I'll have to put the second half way down here, and I don't really want to do that.

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There are some good choices on here - http://www.readingtheworld.org - for my challenge, I am going to stick to authors from the countries on the list. If they happen to be writing about their home country, then all the better, but I am not going to let that be the deciding factor. I don't want to narrow my choices any more than necessary!

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