I thought I would start a new thread for my reading globally challenge, as my last one was getting a bit lengthy. Also, in line with other literary travellers (biblionauts?) I will keep my map and my list at the top of this thread, and update regularly. Sorry for taking up even more room on these threads than I already have.

I was asked about my criteria for choosing books recently. It is a mixture of gut feeling, author nationality, setting and subject, with the first two being the most important. There is a long discussion of this in the thread Deciding where a book is from'.

There are still only 192 on the list. Kosovo is not a UN member yet, despite declaring independence, and is unlikely to be for a while if Russia holds firm. There are many countries in this situation (Taiwan, Transnistria, Palestine, Northen Cyprus, Abkhazia, etc.) and I would love to read from them one day, but 192 is still the stated target. These non-UN nations are defined as nations under the 'Montevideo Agreement'. Montenegro is the 192nd and newest UN member, joining a couple of years ago.

I have, however, started to list other nations (ones without UN membership or international recognition) as I read them. They are not included in my 192 challenge per se, but I have added them to the end of the list.

My map just shows 'visited' countries (updated to 131 at the moment). I only update this every 10 nations or so (or if I read from a really big one).

My list includes what I think is my favourite for each country or, where I had a few to choose from, something that I thought people may not be as familiar with as some of the others. Everything on the list is a novel (in the broad sense - including novellas and memoirs written as novels) except where I have indicated otherwise. I have also added star ratings. In general, I don't like giving star ratings, but I wouldn't want anyone to think that the list was exclusively recommendations. There are some real stinkers in there!
***** = superb, books will stay with me for a long time
**** = highly recommended
*** = enjoyable reads, but not especially memorable
** = flawed but interesting
* = really wish I hadn't bothered

Message edited by its author, Jan 25, 2009, 5:46am.

Visited Countries Map from TravelBlog


Reading Globally Density Map

Map Legend: 50%, 132 of 263 Territories

100+ books read

26-99 books read

6-25 books read

2-5 books read

1 book read



Reading Globally Challenge Map


© worldmapmaker.com | Travel Insurance

Message edited by its author, Aug 27, 2009, 3:01am.

AFRICA
Southern Africa:
1.Angola: Return of the Water Spirit by Pepetela ***
2.Botswana: Maru by Bessie Head **
3.Lesotho: Chaka by Thomas Mofolo ****
4.Malawi: The Last of the Sweet Bananas by Jack Mapanje (poetry) ****
5.Mozambique: Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto ****
6.Namibia: The Purple Violet of Oshaantu by Neshani Andreas **
7.South Africa: Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton ****
8.Swaziland: A Time of Bliss by Martha Mphahlele *
9.Zambia: Bitterness by Malama Katulwende **
10.Zimbabwe: Year of the Uprising by Stanlake Samkange *

East Africa:
11.Djibouti:The Land Without Shadows by Abdourahaman Waberi (short stories)***
12.Eritrea: Riding the Whirlwind by Bereket Habte Selassie ***
13.Ethiopia: The Thirteenth Sun by Daniachew Worku ***
14.Kenya: The Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong’o *****
15.Somalia: From a Crooked Rib by Nurredin Farah ***
16.Tanzania: Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah ****
17.Uganda: Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa **

Indian Ocean:
18.Mauritius: Getting Rid of It by Lindsey Collen **

North Africa:
19.Algeria: Exile and the Kingdom by Albert Camus (short stories) *****
20.Egypt: Woman at Point Zero by Nawal el Saadawi***
21.Libya: Anubis: a desert novel by Ibrahim al-Koni **
22.Morocco: A Life Full of Holes by Driss ben Hamed Charadhi *****
23.Sudan: Minaret by Leila Abouleila ***
24.Tunisia: The Pillar of Salt by Albert Memmi ****

Central Africa:
25.Cameroon: Ashanti Doll by Francis Beybey *
26.Congo (Brazzaville): Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez by Sony Labou Tansi ***
27.Congo (Kinshasa): Full Circle by Frederick Yamusangie **
28.Gabon: Mema by Daniel Mengara ***
29.Nigeria: A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe ****

West Africa:
30.Benin: Snares Without End by Olympe Bhely-Quenum ***
31.Cote d’Ivoire: Allah is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma ****
32.Gambia: Reading the Ceiling by Dayo Forster **
33.Guinea: The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye***
34.Ghana: Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo ***
35.Mali: Bound to Violence by Yambo Ouologuem *
36.Senegal: The Belly of the Atlantic by Fatou Diome ***
37.Sierra Leone: A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah (non-fiction) ***

AMERICAS

North America
38.Canada: The Life of Pi by Yann Martel ***
39.Mexico: Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo ***
40.USA: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller *****

Central America:
41.Belize: Beka Lamb by Zee Edgell ***
42.El Salvador: Cuzcatlan, Where the Southern Sea Beats by Manlio Argueta ****
43.Guatemala: The Mulatta and Mister Fly by Miguel Angel Asturias **
44.Nicaragua: The Country Under My Skin by Gioconda Belli (non-fiction) ***

Caribbean:
45.Antigua and Barbuda: Mr Potter by Jamaica Kincaid **
46.Bahamas: God’s Angry Babies by Ian Gregory Strachan ****
47.Barbados: In the Castle of My Skin by George Lamming *****
48.Cuba: The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier *****
49.Dominica: The Orchid House by Phyllis Shand Allfrey ****
50.Grenada: Rotten Pomerack by Merle Collins (poetry) **
51.Haiti: Masters of the Dew by Jacque Roumain ***
52.Jamaica: The Hills Were Joyful Together by Roger Mais ****
53.St Lucia: Omeros by Derek Walcott (poetry) ****
54.St Vincent and the Grenadines: Spirits in the Dark by H. Nigel Thomas ****
55.Trinidad and Tobago: A House for Mister Biswas by V.S. Naipaul ****

South America:
56.Argentina: Winter Quarters by Osvaldo Soriano ****
57.Bolivia: Juan de la Rosa by Nataniel Aguirre ***
58.Brazil: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho **
59.Chile: My House is On Fire by Ariel Dorfman (short stories) ****
60.Colombia: In Evil Hour by Gabriel Garcia Marquez ****
61.Ecuador: Huasipungo by Jorge Icaza ****
62.Guyana: Tide Runnings by Oonya Kempadoo *
63.Paraguay: I the Supreme by Augusto Roa Bastos***
64.Peru: Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa ****
65.Uruguay: Five Black Ships by Napoleon Baccino Ponce de Leon ****
66.Venezuela: Dona Ines Versus Oblivion by Ana Teresa Torres ****

ASIA

Middle East:
67.Afghanistan: Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi ***
68.Bahrain: QuixotiQ by Ali al Saeed **
69.Cyprus: Young Man Seeks Position: Good References by Loukis Akritas ****
70.Iran: The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat **
71.Iraq: Saddam City by Mahmoud Saeed ****
72.Israel: Two Tales by Shmuel Yosef Agnon (short stories) ***
73.Lebanon: Women of Sand and Myrrh by Hanan al-Shayk ***
74.Saudi Arabia: Adama by Turki al-Hamad ***
75.Syria: Just Like a River by Mujammad Kamil al-Khatib **
76.Turkey: My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk ****

Caucasus:
77.Armenia: Khent by Raffi ***
78.Azerbaijan: Ali and Nino by Kurban Said ***

South Central Asia:
79.Bangladesh: Lajja by Taslima Nasrin **
80.Bhutan: The Circle of karma by Kunzang Choden ****
81.India: All About H. Hatterr by G.V.Desani ****
82.Nepal: The Guru of Love by Samrat Upadhyay **
83.Pakistan: Trespassing by Uzma Aslam Khan ***
84.Sri Lanka: Reef by Romesh Gunesekera **

Central Asia:
85.China: Red Azalea by Anchee Min ***
86.Kyrgyzstan: The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov ***
87.Uzbekistan: The Railway by Hamid Ismailov ****

Far East:
88.Japan: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami ****
89.South Korea: The Reverse Side of Life by Lee Seung-U ****

South East Asia:
90.East Timor: The Crossing by Luis Cardoso ****
91.Indonesia: Footsteps by Pramoedya Ananta Toer ****
92.Malaysia: Srengenge by Shahnon Ahmad **
93.Philippines: Waywaya by F. Sionil Jose (short stories) ***
94.Singapore: The Bondmaid by Catherine Lim ***
95.Thailand: Mad Dogs & Co by Chart Korbjitti *
96.Vietnam: The Family Wound by Jade Ngoc Quang Huynh *

EUROPE

Western Europe:
97.Andorra: All Andorra by Richard Fiter I Vilajoana (non-fiction) *
98.Austria: Extinction by Thomas Bernhard *****
99.Belgium: Villa des Rose by William Elsschot ***
100.France: Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre ****
101.Germany: The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse *****
102.Ireland: Ulysses by James Joyce *****
103.Italy: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco *****
104.Netherlands: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (non-fiction) ****
105.Portugal: The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago ****
106.Spain: Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes ***
107.Switzerland: Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars **
108.UK: The Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg *****

Northern Europe:
109.Denmark: Under the Sun by Hanne Marie Svendsen ****
110.Estonia: Things in the Night by Mati Unt ***
111.Finland: A Fool’s Paradise by Anita Konkka ****
112.Iceland: The Atom Station by Halldor Laxness ***
113.Lithuania: City of Ash by Eugenijus Alisanka (poetry) ***
114.Norway: Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder ***
115.Sweden: Martin Birck’s Youth by Hjalmar Soderberg *****

Eastern Europe:
116.Czech Republic: Europeana by Patrick Ourednik (non-fiction) *****
117.Hungary: Battlefields and Playgrounds by Janos Nyiri ****
118.Poland: This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski (short stories)****
119.Romania: The Royal Hunt by D.R. Popescu **
120.Russia: The Burn by Vassily Aksyonov *****
121.Slovakia: The Year of the Frog by Martin Simecka ****
122.Ukraine: Perverzion by Yuri Andrukhovych ****

South Eastern Europe:
123.Albania: Broken April by Ismael Kadare ****
124.Bosnia and Herzegovina: Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergovic (short stories) ****
125.Bulgaria: Natural Novel by Georgi Gospodinov ****
126.Croatia: The Banquet at Blitva by Miroslav Krleza ***
127.Greece: The Odyssey by Homer ***
128.Serbia: Hourglass by Danilo Kis ****
129.Slovenia: Joyce’s Pupil by Drago Jancar (short stories) **
130.Montenegro: The Red Cockerel by Miodrag Bulatovic ***
131.Macedonia: Conversation with Spinoza: a cobweb novel by Goce Smilevski ****

OCEANIA
132.Australia: Collected Stories by Peter Carey (short stories) **
133.New Zealand: Potiki by Patricia Grace *****
134.Samoa: Pouliuli by Albert Wendt **
135.Tonga: Tales from the Tikongs by Epeli Hau’Ofa (short stories) **

RECENTLY ADDED
136.Belarus: The Punitive Squads by Ales Adamovich *****
137.Malta: Tony the Sailor's Song by Anton Buttigieg (non-fiction) *
138.Jordan: Inside the Night by Ibrahim Nasrallah ***
139.Honduras: The Big Banana by Roberto Quesada ***
140.Cost Rica: Years Like Brief Days by Fabian Dobles ***

'OTHER' PLACES
1.Abkhazia: The Thirteenth Labour of Hercules by Fazil Iskander (short stories) ***
2.Palestine: Qissat:Short Stories by Palestinian Women (short stories) ***
3.Martinique: Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau ***

Message edited by its author, Oct 6, 2009, 4:55am.

Country # 106: Paraguay
I the Supreme by Augusto Roa Bastos

A fictionalised account of the dictator, tyrant and founder of Paraguay: Jose Francia. The book purports to be the dictators dictation to his secretary, liberally interspersed with private notes and outside references. Bastos tries to paint a picture of the mind of the dictator, an increasingly paranoid isolationist fighting to maintain independence from the dual threats of Buenos Aries and Brazil.
I the Supreme is incredibly dense, throwing fact after fact at the reader. After 60 pages I was completely lost, necessitating an emergency read of wikipedia and gaining a grounding in Paraguay's history. After this, it became an easier read, but not much. The entire book is presented as musings of the dictator, a series of internal monologues about Paraguay, power and the loneliness of command. It is, in places, incredibly well written, mixing the punning of Cabrera Infante with genuinely haunting magical realism. Both of these devices are used sparingly, and Bastos is skillful in their application. However, at 450 pages of small print, the relentless pace and unvarying structure did wear me down. Although themes do develop, there is no overall narrative to the dictator's thoughts and it became a slog in places. I read this very slowly, largely because there were many times that I couldn't face picking it up again, which is unusual for me. It was an odd experience: writing I occassionally liked a lot packaged in a book that never really got started.

Message edited by its author, Jan 25, 2008, 8:31pm.

I have accumulated a few 'new countries' and intend to read them broadly from west to east, starting with a longish stay in South/Central America and the Caribbean.

I am VERY impressed by how far you've come with your challenge!

I am also impressed. And I'm not sure if you noticed, but your list in message #3 ends with country #106. So shouldn't Paraguay be #107? I can't bear the thought of you getting to 191 and searching frantically for that last country ... only to find an error back at 106. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't point it out now. :-)

Thanks for the encouragement, but I put Paraguay on my list (and updated a few existing reads). #107 is going to be El Salvador, hopefully fairly soon.

Smilla's Sense of snow by Peter Hoeg could count for either Denmark or Greenland. A good mystery.

Country #107: El Salvador
Cuzcatlan, Where the Southern Sea Beats by Manlio Argueta

A fantastic piece of writing covering four generations of a peasant family and their lives during fifty years of military dictatorship and violent oppression. El Salvador was (for me) one of the forgotten conflicts of the 20th Century, and one which I knew little about. Argueta, gives the victims a human face, and reminds the world of the horrors of a seemingly unending civil war.
The narrative jumps around in time, with brief chapters examining the lives of single characters. The jumpiness is a touch overdone in places, with chapters punctuated by flashbacks that disrupt the overall rythm. However, this is a minor gripe. The family history is beautifully and tragically told, and Argueta builds up a picture of the repetitivenss of poverty through generations who are just trying their best to get by. He gives the oppressed natives a voice (Cuzcatlan is the aboriginal name for El Salvador) and a life beyond the forgotten victims or cannon fodder for the military government. It is touching and informative, and a recommended bit of writing.

Country #108: Grenada
Rotten Pomerack by Merle Collins

I don't read a lot of poetry, and don't really have much of a critical guage beyond knowing if something has really hit home or not (which is a good starting point, I think). Collins' short book failed to find a target with me. Her language was a little too mundane and her message, concerning her feelings about being labelled an outsider in another country (the UK), was unremittingly depressing and without sparks of positivity or light. This is a melancholy collection of poems, and maybe I just wasn't in the right mood, but it ended up being a pedestrian read for me.

Message edited by its author, Feb 20, 2008, 5:22pm.

Country #109: Nicaragua
The Country Under my Skin by Gioconda Belli

This is Belli's autobiography, charting her life from spoilt bourgoise child to Sandinista revolutionary, to international stateswoman. It focuses on her twin roles: as a mother and lover, and as an armed revolutionary, and exposes the conflicts that these roles brought into being. The Sandanista struggle in Nicaragua is a microcosm of 20th century politics, a battle between left and right, a pawn in cold war diplomacy, and Belli is well placed to describe this fascinating conflict from the inside.
Belli is an award winning poet, and her ease with language (she was also involved in the translation into English) made this an engaging read. However, I felt that there was a limit to how far into her head Belli was allowing the reader, and this was frequently frustrating. For instance, her transition from an upper middle class rich kid to left wing revolutionary is too quick, too easy, and never really explained satisfactorally. there was a brevity to each chapter that didn't really allow me to get a deep understanding of what Belli felt and thought at the time. Consequently, as a source of the events of the Sandanista uprising in Nicaragua, Belli's book was interesting, but as an autobiography I thought it left something to be desired.

Message edited by its author, Feb 20, 2008, 5:37pm.

Country #110: Cyprus
Young Man Seeks Position: Good references by Loukis Akritas

I am technically still touring the caribbean, but am having a book flow problem so have skipped to Europe for a while.

This book is published by Diaspora Books, a small publishing house dedicated to telling the stories of Greeks and Greek Cypriots who have left their home countries. It is bizarrely put together, with a long intro about the Greek diaspora in general, interspersed with badly reproduced photos, and finishes with an almost entirely irrelevant afterword. The text is badly printed at a slant and abounds with typos. Its lucky then that the text is absolutely outstanding.
It is a fictionalised biography of Akritas as he left Cyprus as a young man to seek work in Athens. Written and set in the 1930s, during the great depression, the hero, intially confident of work, receives disappointment after disappointment, and is cheated and misled by his equally desperate and starving friends. Each chapter is a vignette, only a few pages long, chronicalling the erosion of the hero's hopes and their replacement with a desperate reality. The details of a down and out life is vivid, such as Akritis' explanations of how best to fool your stomach that it has been fed. This is writing from someone who has been there, and is painful and beautiful in its stark simplicity. Women, money and food all become mountainous issues pushing the young exiles closer to despair. Very powerful, but it is not all depressing, as the hero's faith in the human spirit occassionally pays off, and each victory feels sublime. This is not a purposefully downbeat book, just a retelling of real life at a certain time in a certain place. If you see this on the shelf you will probably ignore it (judging books by their covers, which I'm sure we all do a bit), but it is well worth a look if you get the chance.

Message edited by its author, Feb 26, 2008, 4:25am.

Country #111: Denmark
Under the Sun by Hanne Marie Svendsen

Finally made it to Denmark. Quite how I managed to 'visit' 110 other countries before making it here is beyond me. I have had this book on my shelf for two years as well, and the time never seemed quite right to read it. Anyway, it was well worth the wait.

Under the Sun is a startling post-modern work. It follows the life of Margarethe Theide, who is born, grows up and lives in a small fishing village on the Danish coast. It follows her life, and those of the characters who inhabit the town. Her childhood is shaped by her mother ('the carrot fairy'), three elderly eccentric brothers who live together in a cottage and speak their own language, and her friend Lily Lund. As she grows up and ages her relationships with these, and others, bring into question her definitions of truth and reality. Meanwhile, the murky goings-on at a newly built naval base and Egon, the town's grey eminence, provide an uncomfortable undercurrent to Margarethe's life.
Under the Sun mixes dream narratives, fairy tale language and bouts of madness to create an unreal, hallucinatory feeling. All of these are presented as being as real as 'reality' (or perhaps as unreal as 'reality'). Other strong themes include the maleability of time, with events that are separated by years being discussed simultaneously, and the failure of our language to accomodate this dream-like reality. It is an ambitious, post-modern novel that, most of the time, succeeds in challenging the reader to inhabit this new world. It never loses its emotional power, despite addressing some weighty intellectual issues. This is probably my read of the year to date.

btw it is the second book I have read published by Norvik Press, who appear to publish translations of Scandinavian writers who are not well know in English. Both have been outstanding.

Message edited by its author, Mar 5, 2008, 5:16pm.

Under the Sun sounds fascinating - I'll bear it in mind for when I make it to Denmark myself.

I might want to read it myself. New York Public Library has three copies, so it is findable. I went and combined the two copies in LT (one Danish, Unter Solen, one English -- the English title won out).

Country #112: Haiti
Masters of the Dew by Jacques Roumain

This is the subject of my reading for the March in Haiti thread, so there will be more detailed opinions on this, and many other Haitian books, there. I will post a little review here as usual though.

Masters of the Dew is a socialist realist novel written in 1944 by the prominent Haitian communist Jacques Roumain. It follows the story of Manuel, who is returning to his Haitian village after years in Cuba, to find it poor, starving and feuding. He tries to unite the village to build a canal so that it can farm prosperously and harmoniously once more, but finds old hatreds, religious beliefs and scheming landlords blocking his way.
I enjoyed Masters of the Dew, but it was unrelenting in its political preaching and this did detract from the book. Every character becomes a cipher to illustrate a point about marxist politics and Haitian society, to the point that aspects of characterisation and narrative sometimes become squeezed in its political framework. This is, of course, an issue with any book trying to take on much bigger issues than are simply suggested by the story, and there are many examples that get the balance more badly wrong than Masters of the Dew. It is a quick, easy and interesting read, and worth a look if you get the chance.

Message edited by its author, Mar 5, 2008, 3:03pm.

Country #113: Bulgaria
Natural Novel by Georgi Gospodinov

With thanks to LizT, my not-so-secret secret Santa.

In my review of my Danish read I described it as a 'startling post-modern work' and 'possibly my book of the year to date'. I may as well cut and paste it here, because both apply to Natural Novel.

Natural Novel is piece of meta-fiction, which chronicles the attempt of an editor (called Georgi Gospodinov) to make sense of a manuscript (written by a homeless man called Georgi Gospodinov). The manuscript is an attempt to write a 'natural novel', which is built up from a mosaic of stories about flies, plants, excrement and loneliness (among other things). The fly provides the inspiration for the structure, as the mosaic of the narrative parallels the mosaic built up by an insect's compound eye. All the while the narrator is trying to make sense of his wife's infidelity and the end of his marriage. The whole book becomes an elliptical story of Gospodinov's descent into loneliness. The tone is melancholy, the structure brilliantly realised and the writing beyond clever. Fans of If on a Winter's Night a Traveller will love this, as will anyone interested in a bit of mind-bending post-modern fiction.

I'm off back to Africa for a bit. Not the 6 month stay of last year, but a couple of West African reads (if my library can find them) and then a whole bunch of Arab writers from North Africa and Arabia.

Message edited by its author, Mar 23, 2008, 7:03am.

I'm really pleased you enjoyed it - it did sound intriguing! I might have to go and look it out now... I'm surprised I wasn't unsecret earlier though - I got the name of my santa on the packing slip I think. Ah well, all's well that ends well!

-->19
Sorry about that. I assumed the secret Santa would remain secret, so didn't look for a name on the parcel (this is despite the fact that my recipient e-mailed to thank me a few days after Christmas). Otherwise I would have said thanks sooner! As for the Gospodinov, some people can't stand weirdly constructed post-modern novels, others enjoy the challenge. If you ever fall into the latter category, I would heartily recommend it.

Country #114: The Gambia
Reading the Ceiling by Dayo Forster

'Reading the Ceiling' is the sory of Dele, a young girl who, on her 18th birthday, decides to lose her virginity. She has 4 men to choose from, and her choice has repercussions for the rest of her life. The book has 3 separate narratives, each of which starts on the night of her 18th birthday, involves her choosing a different partner, and then follows the rest of her life. These three possible lives are all very different, and written to illustrate the importance of how Dele views her sexuality based on her initial sexual partner.
Initially I was very taken with this book. The descriptions of Dele trying to take control of her sexuality and her views of sex and virginity - which are those of a child trying to be an adult - are very believable. However, the book lives and dies by the three parallel narratives, and they completely failed to work for me. The three life stories didn't seem to follow inevitably from Dele's initial choice, and it seemed to me that Forster could have written any story she wanted about Dele's subsequent lives. That meant that the book wasn't about the consequences of trying to take control of your sexuality when young, but simply a bunch of stories about the love life of a woman. In addition, the Deles of the three stories are so different to each other that I struggled to see them as the same woman.

btw one of Dele's lives is as a second wife to a muslim man. A possible read for the 'Muslim Woman' month in April?

Message edited by its author, Mar 11, 2008, 1:47pm.

Hm, despite your reservations, I'm intrigued.

Avaland,
I certainly wouldn't advise anyone not to read Reading the Ceiling. The writing was engaging and the stories interesting. My only reservation was that this was a concept driven book and the concept didn't really work (for me), but this is not an awful book by any means. I read it fairly quickly, and it was certainly something different.

I'd be interested to try it to. Too bad it's not available from Amazon or my public library.

ah, but it is available through The Book Depository (new) for about $15. - free shipping worldwide! (a real enabler, aren't I?)

avaland...you're a book-dealer...pushing the drug of reading onto poor addicts everywhere...who knew?!?!

>a former bookseller;-)

Country #115: Tunisia
The Pillar of Salt by Albert Memmi

Actually if Avaland is a pusher, then she is doing it wrong, because she gave me this one for free, and has yet to aggressively sell me more books at extortionate prices. Thanks again, Avaland, it was very kind of you.

I flat out loved this book. It is the thinly fictionalized autobiography of Memmi, in the guise of Alexandre Benillouche, a Jewish inhabitant of the poorer quarters of Tunis. It covers his rather confused development from child to young adult. As a child he must comes to terms with awareness of what it means to be Jewish (or indeed 'different'). Subsequently he must cope with other factors in his life that isolate him from his community: his intellectualism, his rejection of religion, his shyness with girls. The whole book is filled with Alexandre's struggles with identity and isolation. His instincts pull him both towards and away from the herd, and he never manages to fit in. Even in a labour camp, caught on the fringes of the holocaust in World War II, he is unable to assert his jewish identiy because he has spent so much time shedding it. It is a wonderful memoir of struggling to find identity while growing up, and finishes on a note that is both rebellious and melancholy in equal measure. The writing is dense, and Memmi doesn't give his life much of a narrative flow, so some may struggle with this book. However, I found his writing and observation of minutiae captivating, and found recognition and empathy for his plight. A fantastic, if sobering, read.

btw Avaland and LizT, I'm not just saying nice things because the books were presents (I'm far too rude under cover of internet anonymity for that), but you both really hit the jackpot.

Message edited by its author, Mar 25, 2008, 4:35pm.

Well, I can't say I didn't predict that you would love it, 'cause I did:-)

I wouldn't say I loved it myself, but it was very good. I got horribly impatient with his somewhat narcissistic plight (I kept thinking of his mother working her hands to the bone back at home; and how little sympathy he seemed to have for her and the rest of his family). However, I do understand that as he becomes more educated he becomes more alienated from his roots. This is some of that in Djebar's and Mokeddem's writing also; both exile themselves abroad to begin to work out their identity crises. It allows them also to have a voice, where in Algeria they would not.

I think that Alexandre was aware that his constant struggle to find identity lead him into absurd positions where he didn't belong to anything or anyone. He forced himself to almost disown his family completely, because, I think, he felt that he had to in order to not be the poor, jewish boy that he didn't want to be. It made sense wrt his father, with whom he struggled, but his mother was probably the most sympathetic character in the book (I liked her anyway), and I think he knew rebelling against her was silly and uneccessary. That being said, the funeral scene, in which he catches her acting her grief, was quite a powerful one. This woman, who I had warmed to, suddenly seemed quite alien to me.

I have had similar thoughts about my own family. Nothing so dramatic as Alexandre, perhaps, but the idea of how much (or little) identity to get from my upbringing was definitely a familiar theme. That is at least part of the reason I enjoyed it so much, I think.

One other thought - the ending, which I won't give away - reminded me exactly of Yossarian's decision at the end of Catch-22. I can almost hear Henry saying 'Jump' to Alexandre in the last line. Anything that reminds me of Catch-22 is always going to endear a book to me.

Message edited by its author, Mar 26, 2008, 7:22pm.

ah, memories, that reminds me of the first time I strolled through your library now ages ago;-)

You would think that the more I read, the more perspective I'd have on Catch-22, but in fact the more I read, the better that book seems. If I suddenly had the magical power to erase an author's name from every copy of one book and replace it with my own, Catch-22 would be that book. In fact, I am occasionally so sure that it comes from the inside of my head I want to sue Heller for breach of copyright. The only legal obstacles in my way are:
1) He is no longer alive
2) It was published well over a decade before my birth.

Country #116: Libya
Anubis: a desert novel by Ibrahim al-Koni

I don't know whether to describe this book as post-modern or pre-ancient. It is a modern retelling of an ancient Tuareg myth (the Tuareg are the aboriginal inhabitants of the deserts of southern Libya, and a group to which al-Koni belongs) about Anubi, a mythological figure from Tuareg folklore who identifies (more or less) with the Egyptian God Anubis. It is set entirely in Libya's southern desert and follows the nameless main character on his search for his father and, through this, his identity. During the book he is reincarnated a number of times, and assume animal forms as he scours the desert for hints of his identity. Eventually he becomes the spiritual leader of an oasis town, only to watch humanity destroy itself by its own pettiness in the desert wastes. The story parallels the myth of Anubi/Anubis, which I wasn't familiar with before reading.
This book simply oozes with the feel of the desert, which is as much a character as the main protagonist. The seas of sand and rock walls provide limits to man's ambitions, and humble his simplest attempts to be important. The descriptions of the desert are vivid, and come to be inseperable from the narrative. This part was exceptionally well done. However, if the pick-up/put-down test is a good one, then this book failed it miserably. I put it down often an struggled to pick it up. I think there were two reasons. Firstly, the author and/or translator have used such florid prose that I became bored by whole paragraphs. The slow pace and richness with which the desert was described was also applied to every other aspect of the book, and it didn't always make for interesting reading. The second reason is the the book is an allegory told through magical realism, and I have found in the past that if books have a lot of magical realism (i.e. weird events and unexplained allegorical sequences) and I didn't know the story or themes being illustrated, then the events just become a sequence of mysterious 'weird stuff happening'. This happened too often for my liking in this book, and unfortunately detracted from what threatened, in places, to be a marvellous read.

I updated my list to replace The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif with The Yacoubian Building by Alaa al Aswany as my read for Egypt. This, unfortunately, doesn't reflect great positivity on my part for The Yacoubian Building, which I didn't really enjoy, but I definitely found it a less painful read than Soueif's book. I've not had much luck with Egypt so far...

Country#117: Iraq
Saddam City by Mahmoud Saeed

Saddam City is a slim but powerful work. Set in 1979, it follows the bewildering journey of Mustafa Ali Noman through Iraq's Saddam-era jail system. Noman (the name is intentionally informative) is arrested but not told why before being transported from city to city and jail to jail. In each jail he meets a variety of prisoners, guards and torturers, and through their stories, attempts to draw a picture of the brutality of life in Iraq under Saddam.
I liked Saddam City a lot. The author spent time in jails on six occassions, and has clearly drawn on his experience. He captures the absurdity of the prisoner's stories very well, documenting 'crimes' such as having a relative abroad or commenting on the leader in public. The narration is straightforward, without embellishment, lending it a similar tone to One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, which made it both mundane and powerful. Despite the subject matter (torture, execution, etc.) it is the sheer absurdity of the men's situation that shines through, giving the book an almost surreal edge, in spite of the down to earth telling of the story. All in all, this was disturbing yet readable look at the security apparatus of Saddam's Iraq seen from the inside.

Message edited by its author, Apr 16, 2008, 8:54am.

Country #118: Saudi Arabia
Wolves of the crescent Moon by Youssuf al-Mohaimeed
Adama: a novel by Turki al-Hamad

Unusually I had two books to read from my latest new country (Saudi Arabia), so I read them back-to-back. I have reviewed both below. Thanks to avaland for Wolves of the Crescent Moon.

Wolves of the Crescent Moon
This was a 'nearly' book for me. Nearly very good, nearly very clever, nearly very well written. Nearly, but not quite. The book is an examination of modern Saudi life and what its author believes has gone wrong with the country. The story begins in Riyadh bus station, as a man, homeless and poor, is trying to by a bus ticket out of the capital. He doesn't know where he wants to go, but knows that he is so tired of life in the capital that he must get out. As he wanders the bus station, considering his options, a stranger hands him a folder detailing the life of a young orphan boy. The story in the folder leads to the unfolding of three narratives: those of a bedouin theif, a eunuch slave and the orphan boy. Each story illustrates failings in Saudi society.
The blurb compares Youssuf al-Mohaimeed to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I can promise you that the comparison is absolute rubbish. al-Mohaimeed's book does poke at attempting some magical realism (who is the stranger that just hands him the document?) it is half-hearted, and although the writing is fairly jaunty in places, it falls well short of any comic pretensions. The structure is interesting, with the three narratives beginning to weave round each other until they start to touch, but this was done a bit heavy-handedly, and all comes out in a big self-conscious rush at the end. I found the writing to be generally engaging, and read the book quickly. I did enjoy the read, but there was a nagging dissatisfaction at the end that the thing it had been attemptig to do (i.e. critiquing modern Saudi life) was never really done coherently. Consequently, the book became a collection of three engaging but unspectacular stories.

Adama
Adama is set int he late 1960s, a time of upheaval in the Arab world. The 'Setback' - the loss of the 1967 war to Israel - had occurred, Nasser - the father of Arab nationalism - was being forced into compromise, and the Middle East was undergoing transition as many countries (e.g. Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt) were replacing their monarchies with leftist Arab nationalist governments. Saudi Arabia was cracking down on dissidents, fearful of the same thing happening to it. Against this background, Hisham, a young Saudi boy, is just entering into political awareness. His transition to young adulthood is accompanied by growing political awareness and Marxist leanings. His politics do not go unnoticed, and he becomes involved with a dissident movement for left-wing democracy. He must therefore balance the usual pains of growing up (exams, girls) with a second, secret existence of clandestine meetings and political disillusionment.
I enjoyed Adama, and learnt a lot about the 1960s politics of the middle east from it. There is a fair bit of discussion of Nasser and Baathist movements which, with the help of the interent, made a lot of things make sense that I hadn't previously understood about that region's recent history. However, the book's strength is also its weakness. Is it a didactic political book with a coming of age story thrown in, or is it a coming of age story with a political aspect? Poltical meetings and discussion are dispersed with half-hearted love stories and sticky adolescent fumblings, and the whole lot sits together very uneasily. I think the tone is too intellectual to be a realistic coming of age story of a teenage boy, and so the narrative part (i.e. what most people look to in a novel) becomes messy and, bizzarely, irrelevant. In addition the writing and/or translation is clunky in the extreme, with dialogue in particular being far too didactic to be realistic. Adama is the first of a trilogy, and there was just about enough there to tempt me back for more, but not in a hurry. Interesting, thought provoking, but ultimately, not a great piece of writing.

As you can see, both good but not great in my opinion. Both are worth a read though, if anyone is interested in 'visiting' Saudi Arabia. I have added Adama to my list, because it was probably my favourite out of the two.

Message edited by its author, Apr 2, 2008, 1:39pm.

Thats just about the end of my books from Arab countries. I have one winging its way to me via the ether, so will briefly return (hopefully soon). I am going for a 4 (possibly 5) book visit to the southern half of Africa, before hopefully making my way to southern Asia.

Updated my list with a new Egypt read yet again. Have replaced The Yacoubian Building with Woman at Point Zero by Nawal el Saadawi, which I was much more positive about.

Message edited by its author, Apr 3, 2008, 1:33pm.

Country #119: Sierra Leone
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

Beah's memoir of his time as a boy soldier fighting in Sierra Leone is as harrowing and sobering as you may expect. The transition from a happy child to a willing, bloodthirsty and drug addicted fighter is shocking, not least because it happened prior to Beah's thirteenth birthday.
Although Beah isn't, in my opinion, a particularly skillful writer, the book is full of deft touches that remind the reader of his ordinariness, both before and after his ordeal, and the descriptions of his boyish behaviour are well done enough to bring home the point that 'boy soldiers' were just ordinary, unremarkable young men forced into committing terrible acts. If that was the aim of this book, then it succeeds admirably.

Message edited by its author, Apr 9, 2008, 12:47pm.

>39 depressaholic, I read A Long Way Gone last year. I'd seen Beah interviewed on TV and his "ordinariness" was evident. I agree with your assessment about the writing and those "deft touches".

A Long Way Gone is classified as non-fiction, isn't it? Or is a fictionalization of real people and events? (and I hope I haven't started a long debate about truth in fiction vs. fiction in non-fiction)

Nickelini, A Long Way Gone is a memoir, so it counts as non-fiction.

A Long Way Gone is classified as DT5 in LC and 966 in Dewey, both are history call numbers.

-->41
My reading globally challenge includes fiction and non-fiction, although is heavily biased towards the former. In general, I am not reading academic non-fiction as part of it, but I have quite a few memoirs written in novel form.

I think memoirs do tend to blur the line between fiction and non-fiction anyway. If Beah had dramatised events or even written a single scene from a composite of real events, I wouldn't be surprised. My Tunisia read (post 28) is based on real events that happened to the author, but the author changed his name. Does this automatically make it fiction? My own answer is that it doesn't really matter, so long as I get to read another book.

Memoirs, I believe, are by their nature subjective. So, I agree that there is a blurring. But reality isn't precise in any case. Four people observing an accident rarely give the exact same description. Memoirs help to give us a broader view of the world. Our understanding of the world is enhanced, and our feelings may come into play also.

Country #120: Congo DR
Full Circle by Frederick Yamusangie

'Full Circle' is a novel about culture shock and the search for identity. Dada is a young boy, the son of an ambassador, brought up in the bustling and relatively cosmopolitan Kinshasa. To educate Dada about his own country, his father sends him to live in Bulungu, a large town far inland, where the inhabitants are more insular and live more traditional Congolese lives (and have more traditional beliefs). As Dada begins to be involved in own life, he realises his status as an outsider, and begins to understand the differences between Kinshasa and Bulungu. His attempts to fit in precipitate disaster in the town, and reinforce his feelings of isolation from its inhabitants.
There are several reasons not to like this book. It is an 80 page novella, but throws in as much incident as War and Peace (well, almost), leading to horrible pacing and rushed storytelling. Yamusangie isn't an accomplished writer, and his failings lead to difficult passages that fail to flow. However, there was something fairly likeable about the book as a whole, and the story, despite having far too much going on, was, at heart, a well constructed parable about cultural identity. I would be surprised if this was the best thing I could find by a Congolese writer, and would hesitate to recommend it, but it probably wasn't the worst place to start either.

Message edited by its author, Apr 14, 2008, 12:51pm.

Hi Depressaholic:

I just discovered your thread. I love this idea. Are you looking for recommendations of other (better???) books from a country you have already visited? I do have some, but am not sure if that is something you are interested in.

Have updated my list to include Wizard of the Crow as my Kenya read. My previous read was another Ngugi (A Grain of Wheat), which was very good, but Wizard of the Crow is outstanding. It's a big book, but worth setting aside a few weeks reading for.

-->47
Always happy to hear recommendations. The aim of this challenge is not just to tick off countries, but to discover new books and writers, regardless of where they are from. I can't promise to get round to reading anything in a hurry, but let me know if you have read anything you think I might like. There are also region specific threads within this group. If you make recommendations on those then I am likely to see them, and so will other people who perhaps don't read my thread.

Message edited by its author, Apr 14, 2008, 2:46pm.

That gives me a good opportunity ... I recently read The Book Of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa and thought of recommending it to you as an Angola book, but I saw that you already had one. It's quite an unusual read - narrated by a gecko who lives on the wall of a house - but I thought it was wonderfully written.

Country #121: Mauritius
Getting Rid of It by Lindsey Collen

Getting Rid of It follows the stories of Sadna, Jumila and Goldilox during a single day. The three friends are trying to dispose of Jumila's stillborn foetus, which she has in a plastic bag. They are afraid to go to the authorities, fearing that they will be accused of illegaly aborting the pregnancy, and instead look for an appropriate way to get rid of the foetus. The three are 'invisibles': poor, menially employed and, worse than both of these in the patriachal Mauritian society, women. Their travels with the foetus provides a backdrop for a harsh examination of the role of poor women in Mauritius, documenting a system that condones abuse and fails to provide any official support.
I liked the subject matter enough to get into this book, but it was in spite of Collen's writing, rather than because of it. She writes prose as if she would rather be writing poetry, with short, staccato sentences full of nice words and aliteration but devoid of meaning. In places it is almost like a sort of stream of conciousness word association game. All very pretty, but not conducive to reading. Its effect on me was equivalent to an optical illusion, where jarring lines and funny perspective creates a picture that you just can't seem to focus on. I found myself trying desperately to follow the narrative through the jungle of words. I usually enjoy ornate prose, but this was ornate for its own sake, and really got in the way of the book.

Message edited by its author, Apr 16, 2008, 8:59am.

I have updated my map and list to include my Afrcan and Arab reads. I have read from a few large countries, so it looks a lot less white than it did.
I am going to take a break from the 'new' nations to tackle other bits of my TBR pile. I may slip in another arab country, as I am waiting for a book I have ordered. I will read another couple during the 'Yugoslav' group read. After that, I have a big pile of Southern and South-East Asian books, and I will be heading there in a month or two.

--> 49
I have had my eye on the Agualusa for a while. It looked intriguing, but I hadn't heard any opinions on it until now. I may indulge myself next time I pass through Africa.

Message edited by its author, Apr 15, 2008, 12:01am.

That has become one astonishing and impressive map. I've been enjoying reading these reviews, and even if I don't get to many of these books and authors for years, you've done wonder's for my knowledge of world literature. The discussions between you and Avaland and others on African literature have become something I look forward to. Many thanks!

I agree. That map is looking very impressive!

>52 & 53
Thanks. I was looking forward to updating my map this time because I had a few very big countries to add in (Libya, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and DR Congo). It is starting to look mostly red with a few white gaps in now. There are only three big white clumps left (central Africa, central Asia and SE Asia). I will be taking on SE Asia this year.

I think the biggest difference between now and 2 years ago is Africa. Before I started this I had maybe read 15 books by 10 writers. Now it is more like 60 books from 35 countries and 45 writers (will check later and edit in the exact number). The main effect of my 'world tour' has been to normalise reading stuff from different countries. When I started, I felt that reading from (e.g.) Angola was somehow weird, exotic and exciting. Last week, I read my second book from Malawi, and hardly batted an eyelid, seeing it entirely as a piece of literature, rather than specifically Malawian or African literature. Its taken a bit of work to get here, but my mindset has completely changed, for the better, I think. I still enjoy discovering new literature (and, if I'm honest, the list ticking and colouring the map in), so I'm not planning to stop anytime soon.

It is, however, starting to get difficult. I have not, by any means, run out of books, but they are beginning to be more expensive and/or difficult to find. I said a year or so ago that I thought 150 countries was possible. I would now update that to 160ish, but this will be the last year that I will manage to 'visit' 25+ in a single year, I think. After that the detective work will really have to begin.

Your threads are very inspiring. I got the Gospodinov based on your review.

Would you mind describing a bit your childhood reads? In regard to what you said (in avaland's thread, I think) about finally losing the sense of "exoticness" of "foreign" literature, it struck me that I can't remember when I wasn't reading "globally". Some of this was helped by the fact that we lived abroad, so that my reading was "international" from the start, but even when I consider my parental languages alone, there were so many translated works for children in both of them.

I'd be curious to know how this compares. (If this is not a good thread for that, please redirect me.)

->55
I think someone commented elsewhere that there are some nations (the UK definitely being one) from which it is often true that readers never read anything from other countries. That is probably true of most of my friends who are casual but not avid readers. The school syllabuses (syllabi?) are caricatured as being exclusively filled with DWEM (dead white european male) writers. I think even that is too broad for the UK. From what I remember we read Shakespeare, Orwell, Henry Fielding, Dickens. No translated literature and none even, from what I remember, by US writers. This may have changed in the meantime.

I am not the best person to ask about children's literature. I tended to read non-fiction from a very young age (colour picture encyclopedias, etc.) and have read very little children's lit (I've never read Roald Dahl, for instance). My non-school literature reading tended towards sci-fi and fantasy, all of which was by UK or US based-writers. I was in my early twenties before I branched out. Even then I tried reading that strange beast known as 'foreign' literature only really out of pretensiousness. It was considered high-brow and arty to have done so. I read, and luckily fell in love with, Dostoevsky. From there I read Russian stuff and then gradually started feeling my way round the 'European classics'. It is, to be honest, only in the last couple of years that I have read contemporary (i.e. 'non-classic') non-English language literature.

I think (as you may have guessed) that we (the Brits) are very insular in our reading habits. Actually, I think we may be even more insular in our reading than we are in most other aspects of our lifestyles. I was, for instance, much better travelled personally than I was 'literarily' until the last 3 or 4 years. The cultural snobbery about our language ('more malleable than any other') and our literature ('richer than any other') is stifling, and the hero worship we heap on Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen and Hardy (to name a few) is absurd. A lot of British people will tell you quite openly that we have an outstanding literary tradition and therefore no need for 'foreign' literature. More often than not, though, they will believe that while British literature has thousands of classics, 'French' or 'German' literature can be boiled down to a handful of example. As for Africa, forget about it.

I am, of course, stereotyping, but its a stereotype I see quite a lot. I realise that my own personal epiphanies on my journey into world literature may not be especially startling, but I was starting from a bad place.

btw I would be interested in your opinion on the Gospodinov when you get around to it. My short description on this thread doesn't even begin to do it justice.

Thank you, that's a very interesting response.

I think I'll make a thread for children's literature and post more detail there, in hopes that others will join.

Gospodinov--it will be a bit before I get to him, but not too long. I'll certainly let you know what I thought.

Country#122: Montenegro
'The Red Cockerel' by Miodrag Bulatovic

This book is the subject of one of my reads for May's 'Former Yugoslavia' group read. I will post a short review below, and reserve longer thoughts for that thread.

Bulatovic's book is set in a peasant village in rural Montenegro during a wedding. The wedding is observed by two tramps and two drunk gravediggers from a nearby field. The wedding guests are drunk and violent, and when an old man passes with his red cockerel in his arms it is the cue for the violence to explode. The old man and a local woman are set upon, the former being beaten and the latter raped. All the while the two characters accept the blame for their own abuse, accepting the brutish nature of their lives and the inevitability of pain in the physical world.
I was initially uneasy about the grotesque portrayal of the peasants, feeling that Bulatovic appeared to hold them in contempt. His darkly comic style did not lend itself to sensitive treatment of subjects such as rape and necrophilia, and left a nasty taste in the mouth. However, the book is not simply there for shock value. In a somewhat bizarre metaphor, the hearts (or possibly souls) of the characters are all portrayed as red cockerels, striving to fly to heaven. Access to the character's inner monologues also made them a little more sympathetic, making the book palatable, just about. I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it all (as you can probably tell). Entertainingly written, weirdly constructed and more than a little disturbing (not always in a good way).

Country#123: Macedonia
Conversation with Spinoza by Goce Smilevski

My 'visit' to Macedonia has taken me to 17th Century Holland. Thats just the way it works on my thread. I find its best not to worry about it too much. Once again my thoughts are recorded in more detail on the group read thread for the former Yugoslav countries, but I have posted a review below.

Smilevski's small book follows the life of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza was one of the most important thinkers in history, tremendously influencing moral, religious, metaphysical and personal philosophy, and courting controversy during his lifetime. In the book, Smilevski attempts to show the consequences of Spinoza's thoughts on his life as an ordinary flesh and blood human being. The fictionalized story shows Spinoza trying to think away his appetites and lusts as he tries to eschew the transient, sensual things in his search for infinity. It is an examination of how philosophy and intellectualism can lead to loneliness and solitude.
Although the book deals with complex ideas, they are well explained, and Smilevski ultimately is writing about a man's loneliness, which is very accessible. I knew some of Spinoza's ideas before I started, and I think that this did help me get more out of the book, but a determined layperson could probably enjoy this book too. It is not so much Spinoza's ideas that matter, but the way that dogmatic application of ideas can interfere with happiness. I thought that this book was wonderfully different and brilliantly realised. Its abit of a workout for your brain, but one that has rewards in the end.

Country#124: Nepal
The Guru of Love by Samrat Upadhyay

I've been away for a while, mostly reading Solzhenitsyn, who, for those that haven't heard, died yesterday. I had other things planned (pile of Thomas Mann and Gunter Grass being foremost), but I got the itch to start my south-east asia pile. It is, unfortunately, smaller than it should be, due to ordered books failing to turn up, but I still have a few to get through.

My Nepalese read was by an author who has settled in the US, but spent his childhood (until the age of 21) in Nepal, and the book is set in Kathmandu. The Guru of Love is the story of a middle-aged teacher (Ramchandra) who falls in love (or lust) with a student. His wife initially leaves him, but decides instead to live with her husband and his lover. The book attempts to look at Ramchandra's disintegrating certainties about life, and his battles with conservatism and propriety in the face of doing what he knows is right. It is set in a Kathmandu at the boiling point of political unrest.
If it sounds like my descriptions of the plot are a little half-heared, it may be because I couldn't work up the enthusiasm for a book that was pretty awful from start to finish. The characters are terribly fleshed out, unsympathetic or unbelievable, and the menage a trois so comfortable as to be trivial. The family picture is completed by a smug brother-in-law and parents-in-law bordering on evil, all of which felt hackneyed. The attempts to include Nepalese politics and social unrest felt ham-fisted, and it seemed to me that Upadhyay was trying to give depth to a boring (to me, anyway) sexual situation by throwing in a few whiffs of local colour and hoping to pass the whole thing off as being somehow interesting because of its exoticism. In fairness, it was a quick read (2 sittings) and gave occasional glimpses of something deeper, such as in Ramchandra's relationship with his maturing daughter, but ultimately, not a recommendation from me.

Message edited by its author, Aug 5, 2008, 11:03am.

Country#125: Bhutan
The Circle of Karma by Kunzang Choden

The Circle of karma follows the life of Tsomo, a poor, illiterate Bhutanese woman. Born in a small village, she quickly learns that her life will be hard, not least because she is a woman. The men in her life constantly take advantage or neglect her, such as her father's refusal to teach her to read, or her husband's abandonment of her for her sister. Tsomo finds the strength to leave her village and embark on an itinerant life of hard labour, poverty, failed relationships and rootlessness, all the while clinging on to her religion as a source of solace.

I found The Circle of Karma to be an excellent read. It is an explicitly Buddhist novel, but one that concentrates on the everyday struggle to apply religion to Tsomo's life. The writing is rich with Buddhist religious imagery, but the story stays firmly grounded in Tsomo's mundane reality. There was also interesting ideas that I hadn't seen addressed before, such as how belief in reincarnation can be used to reinforce sexism. Although not particularly long, the book had an epic quality, in the sense that I had spent the entire of Tsomo's life with her, and really felt the processes of time passing and her ageing, and was genuinely emotionally invested in Tsomo's fate. It was, in short, an excellent novel about one woman's hard life, set against a vivid cultural background, and a book that I think many people in this group would enjoy.

I am impressed and envious. I haven't made the headway you have. I think I belong to or lead too many reading groups, which are even more specialized than this one. I am enjoying savoring the titles of books from the many countries you have visited. I'm currently reading Anubis, which you mention above. It's interesting but a bit on the "tell rather than show" side of things. This results in characters who come across as philosophical abstractions. Thus far, I would say that this book is rather more informative than "enjoyable" (I am searching for a word here) as fiction. I'm "enjoying" it the way I enjoy reading Hegel or Kant, whose works provide a rather different kind of pleasure or satisfaction than that which I typically associate with fiction. Also allegorical literature is much easier to savor when one is close to the culture from which it emerges. For example, I love Edmund Spenser's The Fairie Queene, but then again I "get" the allusions, the inside jokes, and the cultural commentary.

By the way, I noticed that you have read Under the Sun by Hanne Marie Svendsen. I recently read this book and loved it too, but then Scandinavian countries have never seemed "foreign" to me, probably because certain sections of the United States were so heavily populated by immigrants from Scandinavia particularly from Sweden and Norway. Having grown up listening to Scandinavian composers, Scandinavian folk music and pop music, and admiring the art and architecture, I feel as if I've come home. I feel the same way when I visit Sweden in real time. If I could live anywhere I wished, I would chose Sweden, the south of Sweden in particular. My wedding was held in Sweden in the church of which my husband's great grandfather was the pastor.

I think you have hit the nail on the head about Anubis. I think a re-read after having read up abouty the Tuareg beliefs of Anubi would benefit me no end. I also found it to be 'intellectually stimulating' rather than actually 'enjoyable'.

I loved Under the Sun. It is one of my reads of the year so far. I have read very little literature from Scandanavia. I have a mental list of a few places I would like to get to know the literature from, and Scandanavia is high on it. I haven't even touched Knut Hamsen yet. I have also spent quite a lot of time there (though a decade ago now). I worked in Uppsala for several months. Perhaps we passed each other on the street in Stockholm one day!

Message edited by its author, Aug 11, 2008, 10:46am.

Country#126: Bangladesh
Lajja by Taslima Nasrin

Nasrin is a contraversial figure, being accused by some of Islamophobia, while being held up by others as a heroine in the battle against communalism.She lives in exile in India and many of her books (though not Lajja) are banned in Bangladesh.

Lajja (subtitled as 'Shame') is the story of ten days in the lives of a Hindu family caught up in the communal violence that swept the Indian sub-continent following the destruction of the Babri Masjid, a Muslim mosque, by Hindu fundamentalists in India. In the predominantly Muslim Bangladesh there were reprisal attacks against Hindus, which forced many to flee to India. The family of Sudhamoy and his son Suranjan are secular atheists, refusing to see themselves as being 'Hindu', and refusing to leave their home country. In the days following the destruction of the Bari Masjid, their lives become precarious, as roaming gangs of Muslims attack Hindu homes and businesses, and attack Hindu women. The events force the family to re-evaluate their identities, and question whether they should indeed take sides in the communal debate.

Unfortunately, despite the undoubtedly fascinating subject, this was a really tough book to like. The prose was wooden and the characters a little thin. The writing is overly didactic, which lead to horribly unrealistic dialogue. Characters frequently produced long lists of communal atrocities, listing names, dates and places. Nobody talks like that. In addition, Nasrin occassionally abandoned her prose form altogether, and actually listed atrocities using bullet points. Fine in a text book, a pain in a novel. The narrative, such as it was, largely involved Suranjan wandering around the riot torn streets having political discussions with the people he met. It was all very laboured and made the suspension of disbelief very difficult.It was a shame, because the subject matter and its effects deserve a good examination in literature, but, for me at least, this wasn't it.

Message edited by its author, Feb 28, 2009, 6:17am.

Country#127: Singapore
The Bondmaid by Catherine Liim

Lim was born in Malaysia but spent her adult life in Singapore, and is considered part of the literary canon of that nation. The Bondmaid tells the story of Han, a child sold into slavery as a bondmaid in a wealthy house. Her stubborn nature bring her to the attentions of Wu, the young master, that cements a life long bond between the two that social conventions and intramural politics struggle to break.

Although the plot may sound a little hackneyed, the writing is initially beautiful, retelling Han's life with touching fondness but without slipping into mawkishness. The childs pain and confusion at being sold by her mother feels very real, and her antipathy to her new owners walks the fine line between childish, heartbreaking and comedic. The developing bond between Han and Wu is also deftly described, not least because Wu hardly features as a character at all, other than as a distant and lofty figure. This adds power to the hopelessness of the relationship between bondmaid and master trying to be friends. Lim pushes the narrative forward in short, staccato chapters filled with incident, interspersed with longer, more wistful, chapters that give a wonderful depth to the writing. Unfortunately, I felt that the book lost its style towards the end, with Lim replacing her subtle, touching narrative with something much more melodramatic, which was a little disappointing, but ultimately this was a well written and interesting book.

I have one SE Asian book left in my pile, and a few others from 'new' countries scattered around the globe. I am taking a break to indulge myself in some Icelandic Sagas for the September group read.

Country#128: Thailand
Mad Dogs & Co by Chart Korbjitti

Just don't.

This was one of the worst translations I have ever read. Sometimes it is hard to judge the quality of a translation with no knowledge of the book in the original language. Other times, like this, the translation is so far from being in passable English that it doesn't really matter what the original was trying to achieve. The prose is stilted, awkward and, in many, many places, just plain wrong. The poor quality of the dialogue meant that the main characters (all young men living on and around Thailand's beaches) were indistinguishable without their names or reported actions being connected to all of their utterances. In a book that purports to tell the backstories of these 'drop-outs' from Thai society, the need to engage with them as people was paramount, but they just seemed more and more unreal every time they opened their fictional mouths. For what its worth, I'm not sure I would have got much out of this book anyway. The stories of the young men lost in a haze of weed and booze pretends to be an examination of difficult lives, but loses itself in the arch-coolness of the lifestyle. The picture of Korbjitti on the back cover shows him toasting his reader with a whisky, clearly showing that he is actually pretty impressed with his young drunks. Consequently, there is no dark underbelly to his characters, try as he might to give them one through a variety of admittedly troubled backstories, and no ambiguity to his novel where even the most ardent hedonist should be able to see some. Who knows, in real English this may be a masterpiece, but I will be surprised if anyone is rushing to produce another translation anytime soon.

Thats the end of my current SE Asian trip, which was very disappointing. This was both because I couldn't get hold of the books I wanted to, so it was much shorter than intended, and also because of my 5 reads only one (The Circle of Karma) really impressed me (though The Bondmaid was enjoyable as well). If anyone in LT land can put me right with some SE Asian reads, it would be much appreciated.

I have 3 new countries scattered around the globe, which I hope to get to before Christmas (actually 3 and a half - you'll see what I mean), and then I have no clue what is next. Its kind of exciting. I have an idea of tackling central Asia next year, but am not sure how easy some of the things I would like to read will be to get hold of.

I have just noticed that 128 is exactly two thirds of 192, so at least my Thai read wasn't completely unrewarding.

Good to see you in here again. Did you read any other good stuff in between your country reads?

Cheers, avaland
Unfortunately it has been a while since I was blown away by a book (Circle of karma has come closest). This year I wanted to get to know a few authors much better. My global reading does mean I skip around a lot, and I wanted to mix it with some more involved reading of individual writers. I had piles of Hesse, Solzhenitsyn, Grass and Mann (the mostly German nature of the list is entirely coincidental). I read the Hesse early in the year and loved it. Over Spring and Summer I tackled Solzhenitsyn, and ultimately came to the realisation that I wasn't a fan of his writing or his perspective. It was rewarding to read one author this heavily (11 books, I think), but I just picked the wrong one, for me, at least. After that I started my SE Asian reads, which were only really broken up by reading several of the Icelandic sagas. I enjoyed these a lot, and would like to read more, but none of them really touched me in the way a good book can. The Grass and Mann will have to wait a while, but I am really looking forward to them (especially the Grass, who is already among my favourites). I have been accumulating a lot of what could broadly be described as 20th century European classics (Grass, Mann, Yasher Kemal, Danilo Kis, Joseph Skvorecky, Hjalmar Soderberg, among others), and am looking forward to reading these in the coming months, but 2008 has been a distinctly average reading year to date. I've still found some great stuff though, so am not complaining too much.

Country#129: Bahrain
QuixotiQ by Ali Al Saeed

This was another book written in less than perfect English. Al Saeed is Bahraini, but writes in English because he feels that Bahraini literature does not get exposed to the rest of the world enough (he is right, in the sense that I could find very little else to read for my challenge). However, rather than ruin the book, the slightly strange language actually succeeds in adding to the surrealistic feel of the novel. Set in the picture perfect (presumably American) town of Okay, it follows a few days in the lives of two rootless men. Patrick Roymint and Guy Kelton are lost souls in Okay's clockwork-like day-to-day running. The town is sort of Midwich-like, kept neat and tidy, and bland, by its citizens' acquiescent apathy. Patrick and Guy are troubled by disturbing glimpses into Okay's seedy underbelly, and find they are losing touch with its veneer. They find themselves sliding headlong into the darkness the townspeople are usually unable to see, and come face-to-face with its grey eminences, and their own private demons.
The English is, in places, just plain wrong, but in a funny way many of the odd turns of phrase actually enhance the book's odd vision of suburban life. It is a little like watching a Terry Gilliam movie, where everything is just turned 5 degrees away from normal. Even the character names (Aaron Minister, Randy Challenger) add to the weirdness. It is possible that some of this subtelty is intended by Al Saeed, but he does get enough wrong to indicate that not everything is intended. The story itself is suffused with Sufism, particularly regarding the roles of destiny and fate in shaping people's lives. Initially, there is a strange beauty to Patrick and Guy's interactions, which occur with an improbability that you (the reader) just have to accept. Once you have put your brain in the right place, the surrealism just seems to work.
However, the book fails on a much more mundane level. Once the plot starts unfolding it just can't stop. Where the story had initially been subtle and mystical, by the end unlikely revelation follows pointless action. There are a couple of bloodbaths and a revelation that I couldn't have cared less about. I wish Al Saeed had the bravery to follow his more subtle course because, although there was undoubtedly much to dislike, he was building something interesting for a while. Unfortunately it goes down as another book I can't bring myself to recommend.

Message edited by its author, Oct 22, 2008, 5:35pm.

Maybe you can't recommend it (and I can see why!) - but I'm fascinated nonetheless! I'm still at the stage on my trip where it's very easy to find things to read; it's interesting to see the more obscure things that you're now ending up with. I'm particularly intolerant of bad English, though - large parts of my working day are spent trying to ignore what passes for "English" in Brussels, so I'm reluctant to subject myself to it from choice.

Well, if you do ever make it to Bahrain, you may not have too much of a choice (though I'm sure others will put me right on that). I have definitely gone past the point of being able to choose from a wide range of books. I did a search today for a few of the titles in my 'new countries' list, and a lot of them are expensive or not available, so I'm going to be asking my library to do some work soon. Having written that, I found my Belarussian and Lithuanian targets going cheap on Amazon, so who knows. I think your multilingualism will come in handy though, not just giving you a wider choice from many places, but, in some cases, giving you a choice at all. I have found interesting writers from Mauritania and Niger, for instance, but only in French or Arabic. I'm still busy enough not to worry at the moment. I am still a way away from getting stuck, I think.

Message edited by its author, Oct 22, 2008, 4:59pm.

Country#130: Ecuador
Huasipungo by Jorge Icaza

This was much more like it. Icaza's book is powerful and heartwrenching . It tells the story of a village ('Huasipungo') of native Andean Indians who are put to work on a road building project by the despotic local landowner. The Indians are little more than slave labour, persuaded to work by incentives of alcohol, threats of punishment and cynical manipulation by the church. The abuses of the Indians and their devastating effects on the Huasipungo are beautifully told, and the inevitable conclusion is painful to read. The book is rich with the imagery and language of the Andes, and treads the fine line between personal stories and larger political issues deftly. Definitely a thumbs up from me.

I know what you mean about 'author jags' (my name for your 'getting to know a few authors better'). Although your jags seem far more intense! I am working my way through all of Gurnah and Djebar - at least what is available in English. I've not been much interested in German authors, except for Mann and Hesse, the latter having been read in high school.

As always, your reviews are most interesting.

Country#131: Dominica
The Orchid House by Phyllis Shand Allfrey

This was another book I enjoyed a lot. It is the story of three sisters brought up in colonial grandeur on Dominica between the wars. Their father has returned from World War I a broken man, suffering severe shell shock and needing drugs to get through the day. The sisters leave the island to pursue their own lives, but return on the eve of World War II. Each brings with them more than a little of the worlds their new lives inherit (America, England and the jet-set), including their politics and religious views, which don't always sit comfortably on the sleepy Caribbean isle. The return of the three women brings new challenges to the family, and to the island, as well as reopening some old wounds.
I am not normally quite so positive about books with these themes, but Allfrey is a very good writer. She effortlessly imbues her story with the melancholy of passing time, and the feel of decaying colonialism suffuses the whole book. Although the story is largely one of family history, there are deeper political themes such as the end of empire, the spread of socialism and the changing role of women in society. Allfrey weaves all these strands together to form one seamless whole. The only gripe I had was a small sense of anti-climax concerning the resolution of one of the main story arcs, and a bit of a rushed feeling towards the end as a whole, but Allfrey's book is not really about narrative so much as putting you in the time and place she was writing for. It is a real shame that this was her only novel (though she does have a short story collection), because I would be happy to read more.

I have updated my map again but, because I was feeling lazy, now the remaining nations are in red. I looks slightly better than it actually is, because a lot of the remaining ones don't show up on the map (e.g. the so-called European micro-states and Pacific island states).

I currently have no new nations on the list of 192 waiting. I do have books from a couple of non-internationally recognized states, which I will add on the list as extras when I get to them. I've got a lot of stuff from nations I haven't read a lot from (Iran, Angola, Mexico, Albania) which I hope to get to in the coming weeks.

Message edited by its author, Oct 27, 2008, 2:14pm.

Nonetheless, depressaholic, that map is VERY impressive! Congratulations!

depressaholic, Wow! Your astonishing world tour I find both both inspiring and daunting. I have been wanting to read more African literature for some time now, so I have planned to do that in my 999 Challenge. I think I may have to limit myself to that for the time being. However, when I have more time, I think I will be poaching ideas from your list and insightful reviews. Thanks!

Wow!! Your journey continues to inspire me, depressaholic.

Thanks guys.

>79 Africa may have been the biggest eye-opener of my tour. I wish I had written down what I expected to find when I started. I have some vague memory of aiming for 100 countries in total, and that finding writers from most African countries would be difficult. Now I believe that I will comfortably be able to make 160 nations, and that only 3 or 4 African nations will be impossible.

In general, though, it is starting to get tough. I no longer find stuff in bookshops, and need to order things via the internet. Added to that is the fact that many of my current targets are geting a bit pricey, and it feels a bit like I'm coming to the end of my journey. Next year I will be happy to add 10 new destinations to my list (I have 3 in the house at the moment, so that is a good start). Actually, maybe 11 would be a good traget, as that would leave 50 countries remaining. I'm keeping a firm eye on all the others doing their world travels in the hope that someone else can unearth a few gems for me.

What are the countries you are still looking for?

There are still a few too many to list (61 at the last count). Maybe when I get closer to running out I will list them all and ask for help. At the moment I have an idea for what I would like to read for another 20ish countries, though many of them are hard to get hold of. I'm sure that the excellent progress being made by many readers in this group will help to push me along though.

Actually, now that you have asked, wandering_star, I may start to list the countries I have absolutely failed to find anything from, to see if anyone in the group can help me out. I'll have a think about that.

btw Changed my map back to visited countries in red (rather than the ones I have left to visit). Serbia doesn't work at the moment, so has remained white. This shouldn't matter, but really, really annoys me for some reason.

Message edited by its author, Dec 1, 2008, 1:31am.

Post back here if you find anything for Papua New Guinea. I've read lots of books about PNG, but none written by nationals. Such a fascinating country.

>84
I have found a few names of interest. Unfortunately I don't have access to my lists at the moment, due to the house being covered in tarpaulin and dust. A couple of names I remember are Russel Soaba and Vincent Eri, but there were others. I will post back in a couple of days, when I can get to my stuff.

I should add that I haven't read either of these. Both are really expensive in the UK, but there are some cheapish Soabas in Australia.

Message edited by its author, Dec 4, 2008, 12:33pm.

The names I had written down for Papuan writers were:
Nora Vagi Brash, Vincent Eri, John Kasaipwalova, Russell Soaba, Steven Edward Winduo

I can't honestly say I know much about them yet, as I haven't looked hard at Papua New Guinea so far. I know that Eri claimed to be the earliest native Papuan to write a novel (called 'The Crocodile'). I could also add the name of Epeli Hau'Ofa. He is actually my Tongan read, but was born in PNG to Tongan parents, and had a sort of pan-Pacific upbringing before settling in Tonga, but he did spend a considerable part of his childhood in PNG, I think. He writes slightly scatological and absurd comic stories. I can't say I loved his stuff, but it did occasionally have some satirical bite.

Still thinking about Argentina, Andy?

Not just thinking. I have started tooling up. There is a stall in St. Nicholas' Market in Bristol that has a fair bit of relatively unknown translated fiction, so I popped there in my lunch break and picked up three books. One was on lriley's list of suggestions: A Plan for Escape by Adolfo Bioy Casares. The other two are both by Osvaldo Soriano, and look like slightly absurd satirical comedies. I was a little wary of these, because they are both published by Readers International, who published some relatively obscure translated stuff in the 1980s, and I haven't like what I have read of theirs so far (too comical, too absurd and too light on quality writing/translation). However, the two books were short, form a duet and are about the military government of the 1970s and 1980s (as is the Bioy Casares book). I am still on the hunt for a cheap Cortazar, but will be happy to pay full price for Hopscotch if I have to. I would like to find some female writers to try as well. I am looking forward to this.

#86 - thanks for the list of PNG authors. That's great! Now to see if I can get a hold of any of the books.

I will send you my César Aira - How I Became a Nun, when I send the Restrepo. I may look around to see if there are any women Argentinean authors in translation . . . perhaps we should advocate for a group theme around Argentina? March?

eta I found two anthologies of Argentinean women authors (in English). That should serve my purposes:-)

Message edited by its author, Dec 11, 2008, 8:59pm.

Depressaholic, I read Mothers and Shadows by Argentinian activist and art critic Marta Traba this year. I found it a wonderful learning curve as the story inspired me to learn more about South America.

This book centers around two women, Dolores and Irene, activists during the Dirty War in South America (1976-1983). Their conversations and interior monologues disclose the terror and untold suffering they – and thousands of others – endured during that time. One also gets a sense of the extensive participation in demonstrations throughout the country, and the subsequent arrests, senseless beatings, torture, and death that followed.

Traba was a prolific writer and I found a useful entry on her in a book entitled Latin-American Women Writers by Myriam Yvonne Jehenson. You can read the entry online here from p41-44.

>89 Let me know if you get hold of any. I haven't looked hard yet, but I'm expecting them to be difficult to find at reasonable prices.

>90 That would be great. I hadn't come across Aira and he sounds like somebody I would really enjoy. I would be happy to have a group read for Argentina next year. I am going to have my own personal themed read there next year but, as always, will only scratch the surface, so getting everyone involved would be really good.

>91 Thanks for that. I will check out the Traba. I'm not going to start my Argentina read for a month or two, and it is likely to be ongoing for the whole of next year, so I have plenty of time to find stuff.

Other Places #1: Abkhazia
The Thirteenth Labour of Hercules by Fazil Iskander

OK, so it had to happen. My challenge was aimed at taking in the 192 member states of the UN, but I have suffered the beginning of severe mission creep. There are many places that do not fall neatly into the categorisation of UN member states, places that are not internationally recognised as independent, but that differ significantly in terms of geography, ethnicity, etc.. I always knew I would one day want to read their authors as well, so I have started a sub-category of my current challenge. My target are still the 192 UN member states, but I have added 'other' places to the end of my big list to include these places, and started numbering them from 1 again. My first (and only, for a while, anyway) is Abkhazia.

Abkhazia is a breakaway republic within Georgia. A former state of the USSR, it fought, supported by Russia, for independence following Georgia's declaration of independence from Russia/USSR. The tensions in the region are still high, as evidenced by the war in South Ossetia, which involved Abkhazia, last Summer.

Iskander's book is a memoir, arranged as a series of short stories, covering the author's youth in Soviet Abkhazia. Officially sanctioned by, and published in, Moscow, it is not overtly political in nature, but instead is a relatively gentile collection chronicling the author's Abkhaz upbringing. The stories are fairly short (10-20 pages, mostly), and range from relatively mundane observations of Iskander's friends and family, to descriptions of the wider society around him. Iskander sets great store in describing himself as a humourist, and all of his writing has an absurd touch that treads a line between silly and poignant.
Initially, I wondered why I was reading this. Iskander has no stated ideal in his work, and his fame within Abkhazia (apparently considerable) perhaps justifies an interest in his life. In addition, his stories, though humourous in intent, are not actually told (or translated) humourously enough to make them genuinely funny. After 3 or 4 pieces I was starting to feel bored. However, the charm of the pieces and the subtlety with which he made quite hard-hitting points in such a gentile way eventually got through to me, and by the end I was completely caught up. There was still something a bit too light and ephemeral about the tone for me to really fall in love with it, but it will definitely go down as a very pleasant, if slightly forgettable, read.

Country # 132: Benin
Snares Without End by Olympe Bhely-Quenum

This was a slightly oddly constructed book, split into halves that were almost unrecognisable from each other. In the first part the narrator recounts a meeting with Ahouna, a once proud man who has been broken by the events of his life. Ahouna tells the narrator his story, which involves struggling to make a living against the hardships of nature (locusts, floods, disease, etc.). Ahouna and his family overcome these obstacles, only to be undone by a faithless woman, who succeeds where nature failed, and destroys his life. It culminates in Ahouna committing a shocking act. This part is therefore told as a first person narrative using Ahouna's voice. The second part involved the narrator observing the aftermath of Ahouna's act, talking largely in the third person about what he is witnessing. In this part, the snares that have entangled Ahouna close in to stifle him, and we are witness to the ramifications of his crime.
Initially, I thought Bhely-Quenum (BQ) was a poor writer, because the narrative pace was jerky and clumsy. However, once Ahouna had finished telling his story the writing improved dramatically, leading me to assume that BQ was deliberately using an awkward style to reflect the fact that Ahouna's backstory was orally told in the book. As a narrative device it was a little disorientating, and I wondered if it was a deliberate mirroring of Joseph Conrad using the same thing in Heart of Darkness, which Snares Without End could conceivably have been a response to. The second half was much, much better, and a scene in which Ahouna is captured, and a thief and a priest abused, was full of fantastically grotesque imagery. It more than saved a book I was starting to feel negative about, and BQ started to really interest me as a writer.
I'm not sure I can rush to recommend Snares Without End, if only because similar themes have perhaps been addressed more expertly elsewhere (Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye spring immediately to mind), but I enjoyed this book. One to pick up if you come across it, rather than rushing to add to you wishlists, but worth a look all the same.

Message edited by its author, Feb 7, 2009, 6:50am.

Country # 133: Eritrea
Riding the Whirlwind by Bereket Habte Selassie

Bereket's book is set in the early seventies, during the fall of the last Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie. The events set in motion during this period eventually lead to Eritrean independence. Bereket was an Eritrean nationalist, politician and academic, who played a significant role in Eritrea's break from Ethiopia.

The story follows Desta, a senior politician in Haile Selassie's government, who is also plotting with left wing republican rebels to overthrow Selassie's despotic regime. The narrative intertwines Desta's personal, political and secret lives, building up a picture of the last days of the Ethiopian empire and the forces that conspired to overthrow it.

I was impressed with Bereket's book. It is difficult to tell histories in narrative form while balancing the need to keep characters fleshed out and believable. Bereket definitely succeeds. The writing is a little dry, and occassionally becomes overly didactic, such as during an argument between students about left wing politics, but the author stays aware of the need to portray the foibles and quirks of his characters, and the effects they can have on the decisions they make. The only character that didn't work for me was Desta himself. He was portrayed as being largely flawless, except a few sexual misdemeanours which result from his overwhelming sexual magnetism. He was, in short, a bit much. In general though, I would recommend this book. The prose won't win any awards for its fluidity, but I have read many books that aim to tell larger histories through personal stories, and many struggle to find a balance between the two. Bereket's didn't and, as such, was an enjoyable and informative read.

I have found a map that allows different colours to be used. I have used it to generate a 'density' map of my reading and posted it in message 2. Its kind of ugly, to be honest...

Great map!

I'm curious about your 10-19 books read from New Zealand. Are they in your list?

>96 depressaholic: I don't think the density map is ugly at all. It's cool. Where did you find it?

-->98
There is a link at the bottom of the map. You need to register to make a map, but it is free. There are also maps for the USA, Brazil and, um, some other places that I have forgotten. There are a few others out there on the web. When I have some time I am going to try them and see which is prettier, and more visible. I may also mess around with my scale, to get something more meaningful.

-->97
For reasons that are mostly far too boring to go into, my personal list differs slightly from my library on librarything. One reason, is that when I read an anthology, I split it into individual works in my personal list, but it appears as one book on LT. It is something of an arbitrary decision to distinguish between (e.g.) a short story collection counted as one book, and a collection of novellas counted as two or three. In the case of New Zealand, I have read 4 books by Patricia Grace, 1 by Alan Duff, and 5 by Katherine Mansfield. On LT, however, the Mansfields appears as one, because I read them in a single anthology, called the Complete Works (or something similar). The numbers on my map are taken from my personal list, not my LT tag frequencies. Anyway, I tag all my books by author nationality, so if you go to my tags and click on New Zealand, you have everything that I have read.

Well, you did ask.

Incidentally, and for the nth time, I would like to recommend Patricia Grace to anyone and everyone in this group. She is not well known outside NZ, but is, in my opinion, an incredible writer.

Thanks! Very interesting. And I'm so embarrassed. I read quite a bit but I'm hopeless at New Zealand fiction.

I know Patricia Grace is meant to be great, but I never quite get round to reading her. Or anything else local. Now I'm going to find the book of hers I have here somewhere... yep, here it is: Waiariki. At 89 pages, there isn't much excuse for me not reading it as soon as I finish my oh-so-slow biography of Cicero.

I've finished Waiariki and loved it. Thanks for the recommendation. She paints such a vivid picture of each setting in so few pages. It's the second volume of short stories I've read this year (the other was Alice Munro's The View from Castle Rock) and I'm surprised how much I like the genre now - I used to avoid them.

On a mercenary note, I went hunting for more Patricia Grace on a local secondhand bookshop website last night, and was amazed to see that my ordinary old 1987 Penguin edition was selling for $30 (about US$15)!

thank you depressaholic for taking the time to read and write the list of books you did in your OP. I saw my parent's country in the list and I'm anxious to read a novel by an author from there. I can't believe I've never done this search myself. once again thank you depressaholic and please keep this thread alive. I know i will.

>101 At last, a convert (to Patricia Grace, but also to short stories). Could I recommend Potiki as Grace's best (that I have read, anyway). I'd be interested to know if you thought familiarity with Maori culture was important to understanding her work. I am not from NZ, but spent 3 months there last year and started to learn bits of history and culture, which I think helped with my reading.
As for short stories, I used to avoid them too, but was converted by a combination of James Joyce and Albert Camus, and now think that short stories are often the pinnacle of a great writer's work. I think without the leeway of a large word count, writers have to think very hard about structure, and consequently produce more tight and focused pieces than usual.
btw I forgot to put Ngaio Marsh on my NZ list. Not a memorable contribution.

>102 No intention of stopping yet (though definitely slowing down). I have 60ish more UN members, then a whole raft of 'other' places to visit. I have about 10 more currently on my TBR. Glad you are enjoying the ride. There are plenty of others doing similar things, so be sure to check out the other threads.
May I ask which country your parents were from?

Message edited by its author, Feb 19, 2009, 4:33pm.

Back in October you requested some good reads from SE Asia.

From Thailand, I really recommend Jasmine Nights by S.P. Somtow. It is told from a child's perspective. The main character lived abroad with his parents and returns to Bangkok to live with his Aunts. quite funny. it is fiction, though based on Somtow's real life experiences.

From Burma, I strongly recommend From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey by Pascal Khoo Thwe. It is his story about the student's revolution and his escape out of the country.

Message edited by its author, Apr 6, 2009, 9:41am.

>104 Thanks for both of these. I will need to return to SE Asia, and Burma is still on the list, so I will bear these in mind. It is a part of the world that I have neglected, and haven't had much luck with in the past.

I have been neglecting my challenge for a while now, in favour of other things (especially Argentina). I will be back in earnest before too long, and have a pile of new countries ready to go. For the time being, however, I am just reporting two small changes to my list:
Serbia:
Premeditated Murder by Slobodan Selenic has been replaced by Danilo Kis' Hourglass. Both books are pretty good, but Hourglass was haunting, bleak, abstract and beautiful in a way that I have rarely seen before.

Argentina:
After my mini-marathon through Argentinian literature I have replaced Borges Labyrinths by Winter Quarters by Osvaldo Soriano. Again, both books are good, but Soriano's had black humour and emotional punch aplenty, and was probably my pick of last month's reading.

I have also changed the scale on my 'density map' in message 2. It now represents different groups of countries much better, in terms of how much I have read from each, and how they cluster.

Message edited by its author, Apr 12, 2009, 10:08am.

Another adjustment:

Brazil:
The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo replaced by Yaya Garcia by Joachim Machado de Assis. Machado de Assis' book was okay, which makes it better than Coehlo's, but neither are great, in my opinion.

Message edited by its author, Apr 21, 2009, 9:07am.

I think my favorite Brazilian author has been Moacyr Scliar -- a work that comes to mind is The Centaur in the Garden, also Max and the Cats.

Country # 134: Lithuania
City of Ash by Eugenijus Alisanka (poetry)

Published by the ever interesting, and usually excellent, 'Writings from an Unbound Europe' series, this is a slim volume of poems from one of Lithuania's best known contemporary poets. Alisanka's poems are mostly short, but the content makes the book feel weighty and dense. Alisanka's world is one of claustrophobic skies and grey buildings, of lives lived within suffocatingly delineated limits with only fleeting glimpses of eternal time and wide open space. They examine the limitations given to us as humans, and contrast the poet's abilities to imagine space and time with the concrete and asphalt that define our urban existences.
Although I enjoyed the collection, and thought it was clearly successful in communicating its ideas, there was perhaps not enough variety, both in themes and structures, to keep me engrossed throughout. The poems were tightly constructed, but a little mundane, and the unremittingly depressing tones were a bit much for me. An interesting collection, but not an especially memorable one for me.

'Other' Places #2: Palestine
Qissat: short stories by Palestinian women

Palestine does not currently have full UN membership, despite a general agreement that an independent Palestinian state will be the ultimate solution to the current problems in that part of the world. The Palestinian authority currently has special observer status at the UN, which is why they are not part of my 192 challenge per se, but why I have included them in my 'other' places challenge.

I am also confessing to bending my rules a little bit. In the past I have been fairly strict in assigning nationality by residency, rather than ethnicity. The authors of this anthology include many women who identify themselves as ethnically Palestinian, but who belong to the diaspora, and who wouldn't normally 'qualify' under my rules. However, many of the authors are or were based inside the current borders of Palestine (the occupied territories), so thats good enough for me.

I think that the true test of a short story collection rarely lies in its overall quality (especially in anthologies of various authors), but rather in the moments, or stories, that take your breath away. This book simply didn't have any. There were definitely some interesting writers in here, but none that I will be rushing off to read more of. The subject matter varies between suicide bombers and armed fighters, to more domestic stories in which the intifada serves as a backdrop, or is barely mentioned at all. It was these latter that I liked the most, providing more subtle insights into what the authors see as contemporary Palestinian life, but this was, ultimately, a fairly average and instantly forgettable collection of stories.

Message edited by its author, May 25, 2009, 1:01pm.

>111 Andy, I always enjoy reading your comments on what you've read, but I have to tell you that I enjoy it most of all when you haven't liked the book in question...

Yeah, I think I just have a larger vocabulary of rude words, and have more practice at using them. Plus, when I'm not enjoying a book my mind tends to wander and I start thinking about what is annoying me while I'm reading. When I'm enjoying something I just enjoy it, and try to explain why after the event, which is always trickier. I have noticed that as my challenge has progressed my reviews have become more negative, probably as a function of the smaller pools of literature available from the countries I am now reading from. I am much, much sweeter on my Club Read thread. Mostly.

Sometimes.

Oh, depressaholic, pardon! I saw squeakychu's discussion first and suggested "around the world in ~" and here you are already well-around, indeed the name is right on the group!

No need to apologise! There are a lot of great threads in this group with various twists on the Reading Globally thing. Mine is just one of many. I started a bit before most other people, which is why I have got further than most, but make sure you check them all out if you have time. There are lots of good recommendations to be had.

Country # 135: Slovakia

Unusually for me, I actually have 3 reads for my latest new country (Slovakia), two bought in a bookshop on a visit to Prague, and one sent by our resident Slovak, Poultropus, who was distinctly unimpressed with my choices (and rightly so). I have posted all 3 reviews below.

Signs and Symbols by Robert Gal
'Signs and Symbols' is a difficult work to read and review. It begins as a series of aphorisms, which are then followed by fragments of Gal's personal philosophy. Written at a time when Gal confesses to be at his lowest, they are the words of a philosopher looking up from a deep, dark hole. His pieces describe the view of life, God, ambition and pain from this nadir, while simultaneously lighting his way out. The aphorisms and fragments come together as a sort of dark poetry.

Gal's work is obscure and difficult to access. Occasionally his words are powerful, and easily related to his personal suffering. Too often, though, they are simply barely connected statements, or definitive pronunciations born from associations that I just couldn't relate to or understand. Whereas many authors try to draw you into their world by translating it to the familiar, Gal simply offers his quasi-poetry for inspection without explanation. Because of this, I ultimately failed to 'get' large chunks of Gal's work. Whether it was his failure to communicate or my failure to understand is not the point. There were too many occasions on which Gal and I couldn't find a common language, which frustrated me as a reader. An interesting experiment, but not an entirely successful one, in my opinion.

That Alluring Land by Timrava
Written between 1896 and 1918, this is a collection of short (and not so short) stories which aim to illustrate Slovak family life at the time. Timrava's focus, and her strength, is concentrated on the female characters. The stories have a strong feminist message, outlining the difficulties of life for young Slovak women. They are not eulogies to women, however, with her characters beset by jealousies and petty rivalries over household chores or potential suitors. There are running themes of marriage, fidelity and jealousy, and the biggest problems of her character are frequently portrayed as being caused by other women.
The honesty and brutality with which Timrava addresses her subjects was admirable, and occasionally refreshing. Stories with nineteenth century sensibilities and narratives about who will marry who frequently annoy me, but there was an edge to Timrava's women that maintained my interest. However, while the attempts to illustrate Slovak life were admirable, the stories were horribly put together. Messy and pointless narratives meandered around the prose before eventually dying hopelessly at the end. I don't mind short stories lacking narrative, but these were hamstrung by the author's need to shove one in and hastily resolve it, creating an apparently unintentional anticlimax at the end of each one. There were sparks of life in this collection, but it isn't one I will be revisiting.

The Year of the Frog by Martin Simecka
With much thanks to Polutopus.
This was much more like it. Not just my favourite of my Slovak reads, but my one of my favourite books of recent memory. The story concerns Milan, a young man banned from college in Bratislava by the communist authorities because of his father's politics. Milan engages in a series of dead end menial jobs in hospitals and shops, witnessing firsthand the depressing fragility of humanity and scarcity of moments of beauty in 1980s Slovakia. He finds his own beauty in his girlfriend Tania and his love of running, both of which provide the book with a radiance, but also with its true moments of fear, when it looks possible that he may lose one or the other. Breathtakingly simple, bleakly depressing and beautifully moving on occasions, Milan's thoughts and actions are largely unremarkable, but his search for beauty on the claustrophobic streets of his home town is sad and wonderful in equal measure. One of my favourite reads of this year, without a doubt.

Unsurprisingly, I have added the Simecka to my Reading Globally list as my Slovak choice. An interesting set of books though, if not always brilliant, but the Simecka was fantastic.

Country # 136: Belarus

I also have three reads for Belarus (though two were in a single volume).

Pack of Wolves by Vasil Bykov*

I ordered this online not realising that it was a YA novel (Bykov wrote adult stuff too). I am not a fan of kid's fiction, even when they address fairly adult themes (perhaps especially when they address adult themes), but this was okay. It is the story of four partisans (3 wounded men, one pregnant woman) fighting the Germans and the polizei (Soviet citizens fighting for the Nazis) in the swamps and forests of the Eastern front in World War II. They are told to abandon camp, and make their way back to base for the medical attention they need. Encountering resistance along the way, the book's hero (Levchuk) takes charge, determined to bring his party safely home, against an overwhelming enemy.
Like I said, this was a YA book. It is a fairly straightforward account of one man's heroism, which borders on Boy's Own stuff. However, the 4 characters are actually fairly interesting (the woman perhaps being the exception) and their interactions drive the book along nicely. There is little in the way of complex morality, but Bykov does not shy away from tragedy and disappointment, creating a genuine sense of unease in the reader. If I had known that this wasn't written with an adult audience in mind, I wouldn't have picked it up, and wouldn't have missed it if I hadn't, but it could have been a lot worse than it was.

Khatyn/The Punitive Squads by Ales Adamovich

Its getting a little late here, and I'm a bit tired, but I wanted to get my thoughts about these books while they are fresh in my mind. I have just finished two novels by the Belarussian writer Ales Adamovich. They cover not too dissimilar ground to the Bykov book (message 139) but were a world apart in terms of quality.

Adamovich's books cover World War II Belarus, a country which suffered atrocity as much as anywhere in that conflict. Over 2 million people (a quarter of the population) lost their lives. The eastern front was at the forefront of Hitler's attempts to racially purify large areas of land, and massacres were commonplace. The blurb claims that 9200 villages were destroyed, of which over 600 had almost every inhabitant killed. The killings were done by the German military in alliance with local polizei (non-Germans drafted in to help).

The first book, 'Khatyn' follows the reminiscences of a blind former partizan, Florian, on his way to the memorial at Khatyn that represents all of the Belarussian villages destroyed. As he travels on a bus with former comrades, he remembers the battles and massacres he participated in and witnessed, and the tragic and absurd situations he found himself in, and the people he fought alongside and watched die. 'The Punitive Squads' tells the story of a polizei unit during a massacre of civilians in the village of Borki. As they commit their atrocities, it looks at the previous lives of the men involved, German and Russian, and how they have come to this point, burning civilians to death in a boarded up barn. It is underpinned with an exposition of Nazi thought, and tries to preserve the humanity of the perpetrators, without hiding their acts. As well as the murderers, there are passages of inner monologue from a woman being raked by machine gun fire lying in a pit of bodies. Which provide a graphic counterpoint to the men's actions.

I wish I had the vocabulary to do justice to these books. They are quite simply magnificent. In 'Khatyn', the partizans are heroes, but flawed ones. They enjoy their killing and occasionally revel in their hatred. The effects of such a brutal war are laid bare, and trite concepts of good and evil are nowhere to be found. Tragicomic scenarios, such as leading a cow through enemy territory to feed people hiding in a swamp, give way to brutal scenes of despair. In 'The Punitive Squads', this amoral world is even more vivid. Adamovich provides plausible explanations for his character's choices, to the point where they become sympathetic, right before they shoot a baby in its cot. It is harrowing and destructive, a world without heroes and nothing to be proud of. It is simple humanity at its most exposed. None of the people are portrayed as monsters, leading to the conclusion that monstrous acts are very much a trait of humans.

Adamovich is a great writer, and I do mean great. To write books that are non-stop 'action' (in the traditional sense - battle scenes, etc.) but to turn them into acute commentary on the human condition is incredibly hard, and I have never seen it done so well before. In addition, Adamovich's comments about Nazi thought and actions, and their relations to other points in history (My Lai, Auschwitz, Kampuchea, etc. - Soviet atrocities were conspicuous by their absence) was incredibly thought provoking, without once becoming didactic asides, was incredible. This was, for me, a flawless account of the thought that leads to mass murder for ideological reasons, a beautiful, harrowing and upsetting piece of prose the like of which I have never read before.

I have added 'The Punitive Squads' to my list, and given it 5 stars to boot (very rare for me).

Thanks for the latest reviews, depressaholic. You read some fantastic books. I've added The Year of the Frog and Khatyn/The Punitive Squads to my wishlist on BM - and I've just found 2 copies of Frog in my library! (i have to finish War and Peace first so it could be a wee while...)

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I should add that Polutropus, who is Slovak, didn't like the Simecka nearly as much as I did, so be warned that there are diverging opinions out there (but, then, when aren't there?). As for the Adamovich, I am still reeling from it. It was that good. I have seen copies for sale on the net, but they are not particularly cheap. If you can find one at a reasonable price, then I suggest you snap it up quickly.

Message edited by its author, Jun 23, 2009, 6:39pm.

...just a short digression from the usual.

I know it must look like I am obsessed with numbers, given my propensity for counting countries and the like, but they really mean a lot less to me than many of you may think. I do enjoy keeping track of my reading, and its easy, given the manipulability of spreadsheets, to keep stats on my reading, which I like to think I do out of general interest, rather than in a very OCD way.

I am writing this because I am going to mention another number. I recently noticed that Belarus was the 50th country from which I have read more than one book, and that seemed like a mini-milestone. It doesn't, of course, mean 50 nations in which I have thoroughly explored their literatures. In many cases (18 to be precise) it means I have read exactly 2 books. My reason for mentioning this is that one of the things that has been commented on about Reading Globally Challenges, is that they are too much focused on list ticking, or that the idea of cramming literature into such arbitrary boxes is anathema to what reading should be about. What I have frequently tried to say in the past is that my challenge should only be a springboard for more global reading on my part, and that just because I have read one book by a Malawian writer (for example), doesn't mean I shouldn't read any more. I have surprised myself in exactly how 'global' my reading has become, and my challenge has opened my eyes to a vast amount of available literature, and also exposed the narrow confines that my reading used to be in. Before I started all of this I had read books by authors from barely 30 nations, now there are 50 in which I am into double figures. If the aim of my challenge was to expand my reading horizons (and to be honest, I can't really remember why I started all of this) then it has worked. Not completely, and there is lots more to be done, but its been a massive change.

I thought I would jot these thoughts down as a sort of belated defence of Reading Globally Challenges. There was a lot of discussion about what they would (and would not) be good for when people started posting on LT. At last I think I am in a position to say what mine has achieved, at least from my perspective, and now seemed like a good opportunity to do so.

Message edited by its author, Jun 23, 2009, 6:41pm.

I absolutely agree with you. My world vision has also broadened, and I've learned of so many wonderful authors via the Reading Globally thread. I'm not at all a challenge reader -- I dip in and out of group reads periodically, but it has been delightful to discover books and authors (and their readers) from all over the world. I only wish I had more time to dip into the piles of books around my house waiting to be read -- and the wish lists that keep getting longer.

I agree with you , too. I have been on a journey to explore "all" of the countries, but this year I've begun to feel less committed to coloring in my world map (although my OCD side likes that). There are some nations I'd like to explore more in future.

Hear, hear! Non-LT friends who know about my round-the-world "challenge" often ask how it's going, which to them means how many countries I've "done", and they're almost scornful when I've only added another couple of countries to the list (I call myself a keen reader and say that I'm interested in fiction from around the world, and this is the best I can do, kind of thing). For me it's absolutely not about ticking countries off, it's all about broadening my horizons, and if I feel like lingering in a place, or revisiting later, then I do. Like you, Andy, I'm not particularly interested in the numbers, but you've made me curious so I'm going to go and count how many countries I've read 2 or more books from.
I may never make it all the way round the world, and it doesn't matter if I don't - but the more I "travel", the more I want to carry on. Would I have picked out the Dubravka Ugresic novel I just read without my reading globally project? Unlikely. (Equally, I wouldn't have picked out the Dutch novel I just finished and I'd be none the poorer for it, but you can't win them all). It's like real travel - having spent a weekend in Budapest doesn't make me an expert on Hungary, a week in Malaysia can only ever give a superficial taste, but it's much more interesting than staying at home and seeing it all on TV.

Country # 137: Malta
Tony the Sailor's Son by Anton Buttigieg

I have forsaken my Reading Globally challenge in order to attack my TBR this summer, but I am going to try to wedge a few in when I get the chance.

Well, often my challenge introduces me to books I would never ordinarily have read. Usually, it is good thing. Occasionally, it is a bad thing. This one was the latter. I could try to write a normal length review of this book, but I am loathe to spend much more time on it than I already have. To be brief: Anton Buttigieg was Malta's President in the 1970s. This is a book about his childhood. When he was a child he was great at everything. Everyone else in Malta was a caricature, and a bit stupid. Anton Buttigieg is a poet who writes great poetry (which is odd because the stuff in this book was awful). He is great at everything.

Buttigieg opens by comparing himself to Jesus, and finishes by comparing himself to King David. I have never understood the sort of mentality that believes that all other people want to hear about is how great you are. Allied to keen insight and a literary flourish, it can still make for an interesting memoir, but Buttigieg has neither of these. This was 150 pages of drivel. You obviously weren't planning to read this book. That, as far as I can see, is the correct course of action. Continue not to plan to read this book, and your life will be better.

I read a book from Malta. Yay for me.

Great review on the Anton Buttigieg book! I will endeavor to spend this evening not searching the internet for a copy, and not asking my library to order one.

I hope there are better books about Malta out there.

>125 Take my advice, and dedicate as much time as you have to spare not doing those things. It will take commitment.

Actually, I feel a bit guilty about reviews like this. Not because I don't believe what I wrote, but because it seems a bit churlish to read a book knowing you are probably not going to like it (or at least with no real expectation of liking it), finding you didn't like it, then criticizing it. I guess I can only say what I think, and it is one of the hazards of challenge reading. I suppose it would be much worse to never read anything that challenges expectations, and I have found some real gems this way, but it all seems a but unfair on Mr. Buttigieg.

Country # 138: Jordan
Inside the Night by Ibrahim Nasrallah

This was much more like it. Nasrallah is from a Palestinian family, but was born and raised in one of the permanent refugee camps inside Jordan. He is now a prominent member of the Jordanian literary scene.

'Inside the Night' is a dream-like account of one man's experience as a Palestinian in exile. It interposes short sequences (sometimes only a sentence or two) from scenes in the man's life. These are, principally his witnessing of a massacre in a refugee camp, and his attempt to return to his homeland many years later. The events related in the book are by turns bloody, brutal and depressing, and 'Inside the Night' is a fairly downbeat book.

Nasrallah's dream-like prose can be a little difficult to get a handle on. At no point does he give names to characters or places, so everything and everyone remains anonymous. I can find prose like this a bit difficult, because my brain finds it harder to form concrete images of the narratives, and that did allow my mind to wander, especially early on. The upside, however, is that this really did transform the book from being a Palestinian story into what felt like the Palestinian story. It was not about a specific person's suffering and exile, but about Palestinian suffering and exile, and, as such, was very effective. The writing/translation succeeds in being very powerful without being unnecessarily shocking (though shocking it is). It is a short book, and I am not sure the prose style could sustain anything much longer without losing me. As it was, this was a highly original book, deftly executed, and one I would be happy to recommend.

I seem to have re-engaged with my challenge for the time being, after pursuing other things for most of this year. I have another 6 nations on the TBR at the moment, though I don't necessarily intend to read all of them in one go. They are mostly short, so I may get a couple more done before I move on.

As an aside, I have had a few conversations in recent weeks about female authors and my reading globally challenge. I thought I wold go back to my reading lists to see how I was doing. Out of the 138 countries I have read from there are:
101 with only male writers
21 with only female authors
16 with both

Its something I will be endeavoring to fix (slowly) in the next year or two. My immediate TBR is very male biased, so it won't change soon, but I have started buying much more female authored fiction from around the world.

I have the opposite problem -- nearly all my TBR books are by women -- I need to branch out more into contemporary male writers (I have read much of the DWM canon).

>128 One has to admire your determination to correct what is perceived as a bias*; I did much the same back in the early 90s when I realized I was reading mostly male authors.

*I think I have a Belle of an idea that can help with that!;-)

Country # 139: Honduras
The Big Banana by Roberto Quesada

Like many of my challenge books, I wasn't too sure about it before I started. I'm pleased to say that I was very pleasantly surprised. The book is about Eduardo Lin, an Honduran emigree to New York. He wants to be an actor, and the most famous Honduran in the world. Instead he finds himself living in a community of Latin American ex-pats inthe 1980s Bronx, struggling to make ends meet. He is taken in by Casagrande, a Mexican homosexual and dispenser of wisdom and, together, the two men face the harsh truths of New York life.

The book is a really likeable read. Although the subject matter can be depressing, Quesada allows his characters to maintain their senses of humour throughout, and their outlook is neither over-optimistic nor unremittingly bleak. He uses his two main characters to examine the highs and lows of ex-pat life, and skillfully creates characters that are both engaging and realistic. The book was slightly let down by an overly-absurd story line about Lin's girlfriend back in Honduras, but the damage wasn't enough to affect my feelings towards the book as a whole. This was a very pleasant surprise, light enough to be enjoyable, weighty enough to be worth the effort.

Country # 140: Costa Rica
Years Like Brief Days by Fabian Dobles

I felt a little less positive about this book. It was the last book of Dobles' life, and the first to be translated into English. I can't help feeling we should have had something else first.

The book's narrator is 70 years old. He takes a drive into his boyhood area, and begins to reminisce about his childhood. He thinks, in particular about his decision to leave the seminary (due to sexual abuse from a priest) and his decaying relationship with his brother. The narrator uses the opportunity to compose a letter to his long dead mother, explaining his decisions.

The problem I had was that this was clearly an end-of-life book, with all the self indulgences that implies. Dobles was using his literary skills to explain himself to his family, and his readers. While this isn't a bad thing per se, because I hadn't read anything else of his (partly because nothing else is in English yet), I didn't feel invested enough in Dobles to want to read this sort of thing. I was reminded of Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man by Joseph Heller. It is a book I love, and one that touches me very much, because it is clearly a literary farewell from one of my favourite writers. However, the non-Heller fans who have read it have all said that it is rubbish, and I see their point. Heller doesn't work to make you care, and neither does Dobles. The writing was good enough to make me want to read more, and if I did I would definitely re-visit Years Like Brief Days, but I can't bring myself to recommend it just yet.

>128: interesting re: your bias. I have been trying to read mostly woman-authored books for my journey, and it has been difficult. (Yes Lois, I think you can help!)

I do have a book to add, but no time to write at the moment. I know I have given a few people on LT my address over the years, so I wanted to let everyone know it is changing as of Friday the 16th. If you still insist on sending me those massive and expensive Christmas presents you were thinking about, then please contact me for my new address, but please no longer use the old one.

I'm enjoying your reviews. I'm doing a similar world reading challenge without much concern about genre. My rule is that the author must have lived in the country for at least 2 years, or the book must be essentially an "as told to" autobiographical account to an ethnographer. My list and map are at shoshana-world.livejournal.com.

I'm not satisfied with my books for Comoros, Qatar, Palau, Bahrain, or Guinea-Bissau, if you have better suggestions. I'm happy to cross-post my reviews or book descriptions for anything you're interested in.

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Sorry for the delay in replying. I finally got round to looking at your blog. Very impressive! I am trying to confine myself by genre a little (preferably fiction/poetry, but there is plenty of non-fiction in there). I can't help with the countries you list above, I'm afraid. I have nothing lined up for Comoros, Qatar, Palau). My Bahrain read was QuixotiQ by Ali al-Saeed, which I wouldn't really recommend, and my only current target for Guines-Bissau is also Amilcar Cabral, someone who I am interested in outside of my challenge. Not very helpful I know, but it seems that you are getting down to the countries that are not currently on the English language literary map at the moment. Let me know if you find anything.

Other Places #3:Martinique
Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau

Martinique is an overseas Department of France, meaning that it is fully politically integrated as part of France. However, it is separated from the French mainland by several thousand miles, and is heavily influenced by its Creole culture and its legacy as a former colony populated largely by slaves. That’s why I have chosen to include it on my list of ‘other’ places.

Texaco aims to be a narrative history of the island of Martinique. It is narrated by Marie-Sophie Laborieux, and begins with her meeting a town planner, who has come to the shantytown of Texaco (part of the capital city of Fort-de-France) with the aim of developing it and integrating it into the city. In order to protect her home, Marie-Sophie tells the story of how Texaco came into being, focusing on the stories of her ancestors (particularly her father Esternome) on their journey from slaves to free people to homeowners. Through her telling, the story of Texaco’s foundation becomes the story of the poor black underclass that for so long made up Martinique’s powerless majority, and becomes a powerful narrative history of the cycles of oppression and enfranchisement that shaped the island’s past.

Texaco is written using beautifully lyrical flowing prose, that the translators have done a wonderful job of preserving. Disturbing, occasionally horrific, events are told with a comforting humour that reminded me of writers like V.S. Naipaul and Rushdie. Reading the translators’ notes, it is unfortunately clear how much was necessarily lost in translation. Chamoiseau’s attempts to tell the history of Martinique from the Creole perspective include a playfulness with language that is central to the book, including the importance of alternating French with Creole French, middle-class patois and English. I get the impression that the translators were forced to sacrifice a lot of linguistic subtlety; perhaps more so than is usual with translated literature. Nevertheless, the translation is still excellent. My only gripe with the book (and unfortunately it is a fairly big one) is that, as with many narrative histories, characters are lost as they serve as ciphers for the events they represent. Esternome is the main character for most of the book, but I never feel like I got to know him. The oral structure (the book is as told by Marie-Sophie) also leads to strange pacing (the 20 years between World Wars I and II is dealt with in a matter of two pages). This lead to an oddly disjointed feel to the book as a whole, and, in the absence of characters that I felt I was able to get to know, made the book feel much more didactic than it could have been.

I would still recommend this book on the strength of the beautiful language, and fans of the other authors I mentioned should definitely check it out, as should anyone interested in Caribbean history and culture. Make no mistake this is a very good book, in my opinion. It just didn’t quite get the balance right between being a narrative history of Martinique and a personal history of some of its inhabitants.

Nice review, Andy. I'll be reading this one, and two others by Patrick Chamoiseau that I recently picked up, in the very near future.

Great review. You've put your finger on the problem that I had with the book, which I wasn't able to articulate!

I've picked up Texaco many times in bookstores, looked at it, and never ended up buying it. Now I both want and don't want to read it! Thanks (I think).