How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by Saša Stanišić is my book from Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Read The World challenge. I actually had a different writer in mind — Ivo Andrić, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961 — but when I saw this in the bookshop I switched. Mainly because most of [...]
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‘An African in Greenland’ by Tété-Michel Kpomassie
21 November 2008 – 11:19 am
An African in Greenland is an autobiographical book; as a teenager in Togo, Tété-Michel Kpomassie read a book about Greenland and decided to go there. It took him eight years, working a variety of jobs, to make his way up through West Africa and Europe before eventually arranging a trip to Greenland, where he stayed for about two [...]
‘The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years’ by Chingiz Aitmatov
3 November 2008 – 12:44 pm
This novel tells the story of Yedigei, a worker at a remote railway junction in the middle of the Kazakh steppes. There’s a refrain which is repeated at intervals throughout the book:
Trains in these parts went from East to West, and from West to East . . .
On either side of the railway lines lay [...]
scribble scribble
28 October 2008 – 8:23 pm
Because I need to find rather obscure books for the Read The World challenge, I’ve been buying second-hand copies online. And that has meant an irritation I’ve barely had to deal with since university: people who write all over books.
To be fair, whoever wrote in this book was presumably its owner, so they can be spared the special level of hell [...]
‘The Kite Runner’ by Khaled Hosseini
27 October 2008 – 10:11 am
The Kite Runner was really the obvious choice from Afghanistan for the Read The World challenge, since my mother had a copy already. I have to admit I was sceptical about it; the very fact it became so popular at a time when Afghanistan was in the news made me wonder whether its success was based more on [...]
‘The Hostage’ by Zayd Mutee‘ Dammaj
17 October 2008 – 2:26 pm
This Yemeni novel, in what I assume is a coincidental parallel to Orwell, was written in 1984 but set in 1948; it’s about a boy who has been taken hostage by the Imam to ensure his father’s political obedience and is sent to work as a duwaydar in the Governor’s palace. A duwaydar was a personal servant, [...]
‘Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote’ by Ahmadou Kourouma
14 October 2008 – 2:14 pm
Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote is the life story of President Koyaga, the dictator of the (fictional) République du Golfe, as told to him by his court storyteller Bingo.
Bingo is in some ways the ultimate unreliable narrator, portraying Koyaga as a heroic, semi-mythical figure protected by powerful magic, but he is accompanied by an apprentice whose role [...]
‘The Wah-Wah Diaries’ by Richard E. Grant
19 September 2008 – 5:27 pm
This is Grant’s account of making Wah-Wah, his first film as director. Grant grew up in Swaziland and the film is about growing up there, so I read it as my book from Swaziland for the Read The World challenge.
For me, the book is mainly interesting for its portrayal of film-making, which is fascinating but sounds very [...]
‘Maiba’ by Russell Soaba
17 September 2008 – 11:39 am
Maiba: A Novel of Papua New Guinea* is, you won’t be surprised to hear, my book from PNG for the Read The World challenge. I ordered it second-hand and was surprised to find when it came that it was a print-on-demand edition (I’m sure it’s a second-hand copy rather than one printed for me, btw). [...]
‘Rivers of Babylon’ by Peter Pišťanek
14 September 2008 – 2:26 pm
Rivers of Babylon by Peter Pišťanek (pronounced pishtyanek, apparently) is a caustic satirical novel set in a big hotel in Bratislava, now the capital of Slovakia but then in Czechoslovakia, at the time of the collapse of the communist government. It has a cast of prostitutes, black-market money changers, former secret policemen and sex tourists.
The anti-hero of the novel is Rácz, [...]
‘My Father’s Notebook’ by Kader Abdolah
13 September 2008 – 8:04 am
Kader Abdolah left Iran as a political refugee, having been part of a leftist political party that opposed first the Shah and then the ayatollahs. He has lived in the Netherlands since 1988 and My Father’s Notebook is actually a translation (by Susan Massotty) from Dutch. Despite that, I’m counting it for Iran for the Read The World [...]
‘Independent People’ by Halldór Laxness
12 September 2008 – 1:35 pm
Halldór Laxness was an Icelandic novelist (and, incidentally, winner of the Nobel Prize). Independent People was published in 1935, and this translation by J. A. Thompson was written in the 40s. It’s the story of Bjartur, a stubborn, misanthropic sheep-farmer grinding out a primitive existence in hostile conditions, and obsessed with the idea of being [...]
‘Black Stone’ by Grace Mera Molisa
1 September 2008 – 12:53 pm
One for the Read The World challenge. Wikipedia only mentions one writer from Vanuatu: Grace Mera Molisa. There was a copy of Black Stone, her first book of poems, for sale on AbeBooks, so I thought I’d give it a punt.
This is political poetry: Black Stone was published in 1983, just three years after Vanuatu gained [...]
Read the world: a map
5 August 2008 – 3:10 pm
I’ve made an interactive map to show which countries I’ve read books from.
I’ve read books from the countries marked in green; yellow is for places where I have some ideas but haven’t read them yet; red means I haven’t even got that far.
The map is below the fold. For some peculiar reason the [...]
Reading is a way round the world
1 August 2008 – 8:48 am
I used to have a cookbook for kids — still do, come to think of it — called Cooking is a Way Round the World. Hence the post title. To quote Julie:
In one of my Goodreads groups, a clever person had the idea of each of us challenging ourselves to read a book by an [...]