This is my book from the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the Read The World challenge (which was still the Belgian Congo when Sony Lab’ou Tansi was born and was Zaire when he died). It is yet another book about dictatorship — a sequence of dictatorships in this case, each as violent and capricious as the one before. From the very first scene, in which a [...]
Posts tagged with ‘read the world’
The Teacher of Cheops by Albert Salvadó
9 May 2013 – 2:51 pm
Albert Salvadó is an Andorran novelist; The Teacher of Cheops is the only one of his books to be translated into English, and it is, unsurprisingly, my book from Andorra for the Read The World challenge. It is, as the title suggests, a historical novel set in ancient Egypt. It tells the story of a slave, Sedum, who gains his freedom [...]
Survival in the Killing Fields by Haing Ngor and Roger Warner
6 March 2013 – 12:02 pm
Survival in the Killing Fields is my book from Cambodia for the Read The World challenge. Haing Ngor was a doctor in pre-revolutionary Phnom Penh. That alone was enough to make him a target for the Khmer Rouge, but he managed to survive their regime through lies, determination, judgement and blind luck. Later he made it to America, was [...]
The Free Negress Elisabeth by Cynthia Mc Leod
18 February 2013 – 9:58 pm
This is the novelised true story of Elisabeth Samson, a freeborn black woman in C18th Suriname, when it was a Dutch colony built on slave labour. She became one of the richest landowners in the colony and fought a legal battle for the right to marry a white man, successfully arguing that Dutch law superseded [...]
The Diesel by Thani Al-Suwaidi
11 February 2013 – 10:01 pm
I actually finished this about a week ago, but I’ve been busy doing other things: hacking, snorting, waking up in the night with my lungs apparently trying to invert themselves. But this morning I feel much more human, so: this is my book from the United Arab Emirates for the Read The World challenge. It’s [...]
The Republic of San Marino by Charles de Bruc
18 January 2013 – 12:03 pm
… or to give him his full Ruritanian title, ‘Comte Charles de Bruc, Chargé d’Affaires de la République de St Marin à Paris, Grand Croix de l’Ordre Équestre de Saint Marin, Officier de l’Ordre des SS. Maurice et Lazare, etc.’ Although I guess even that’s not his full title, because it ends with ‘etc’. This [...]
Beyond the Islands by Alicia Yánez Cossío
19 December 2012 – 4:44 pm
Beyond the Islands is set in the Galapagos. It’s a novel in the form of a set of eight stories, each about a different character. Each picks up from where the previous one left off, and there is continuity and overlap, but they are somewhat separate stories; eight narrative arcs rather than one overarching one. [...]
The Soul of the Rhino by Hemanta Mishra
3 December 2012 – 11:29 am
Hemanta Mishra is a Nepali conservationist who, among other things, was part of the campaign to set up Nepals’ first national park, primarily to protect what is usually referred to as the Indian Rhinoceros, but which he refers to, for understandable nationalistic reasons, as the Asian one-horned rhinoceros. This book is a memoir and is primarily [...]
88 Days – A true story of Somali Pirates in the Indian Ocean by Francis Roucou
2 December 2012 – 12:07 pm
This is a first person account of being kidnapped and held for ransom by Somali pirates. Roucou was the captain of the Indian Ocean Explorer, a boat from the Seychelles which was chartered by tourists for diving and fishing — although only the crew was on board when the boat was captured. It’s what you might expect: [...]
A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution by Samar Yazbek
5 November 2012 – 3:11 pm
A Woman in the Crossfire is, as the subtitle suggests, an account of the Arab Spring-inspired uprisings in Syria; or at least the first few months of them. This is my book from Syria for the Read The World challenge. Because of the rules I’ve set myself, that the books should be written by people [...]
My Urohs by Emelihter Kihleng
26 October 2012 – 3:40 pm
This is my book from Micronesia* for the Read The World challenge. It is apparently the first collection of poetry by a Pohnpeian poet. I have to admit, I didn’t pick it up with a great deal of enthusiasm; my main reaction when it arrived in the post was oh well, at least it’s short. Because [...]
Read The World challenge: status report
27 August 2012 – 11:47 am
August 1st marked four years of the Read The World challenge. Last time I did a status report was two years ago: at that point I calculated that, at the rate I was reading them, it would take me another four years to finish. Well, I’ve done the sums again, and at the current rate [...]
Songs Of Love by Konai Helu Thaman
15 July 2012 – 12:33 pm
Full title: Songs Of Love: New And Selected Poems (1974-1999). This was going to be my book for Kiribati for the Read The World challenge, but it turns out I misread the listing: the illustrator is from Kiribati, the poet is from Tonga. But I didn’t have a book for Tonga, so that’s fine. I’ve [...]
Translations From The Night by Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo
4 July 2012 – 2:58 pm
Rabearivelo was a poet writing in Madagascar in the 20s and 30s — he killed himself in 1937 at the age of 36. He wrote in French; some of his later poems claimed to be translated from Malagasy, but according to this anthology’s introduction, the evidence suggests it was the other way round: that he wrote them [...]
To Sir, With Love by E.R. Braithwaite
20 June 2012 – 3:58 pm
I knew that To Sir, With Love was a book about a black Caribbean man struggling with racial prejudice in 1950s London, so I was quite amused that the opening — his description of travelling on a bus full of East End women — reads so much like a white colonial Briton describing the natives of a third world country. [...]
The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah
2 June 2012 – 2:51 pm
The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born is a novel set during the last days of the Nkrumah government in Ghana. It’s about a man resisting corruption, quixotically in the view of most of those around him. The scathing portrayal of a corrupt society is all the sharper because of the contrast with the optimism [...]
The Book of Khalid by Ameen Rihani
6 March 2012 – 3:36 pm
I heard about The Book of Khalid because last year was the centenary of its publication, and there was a burst of publicity to celebrate it as the first Arab-American novel. There’s a fuller biography of Rihani here, but here’s the snapshot version: Ameen Fares Rihani was born in Lebanon, but the family moved to New York [...]
Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal
22 February 2012 – 1:43 pm
Noli Me Tangere is described on the back cover as ‘The novel that sparked the Philippine revolution’. Which sounds a bit hyperbolic, but apparently the publication of the novel in 1887 was an important moment; even more so, Rizal’s subsequent execution for rebellion, sedition and conspiracy. So it’s a political novel, an unusually early example [...]
From the Land of Green Ghosts by Pascal Khoo Thwe
19 January 2012 – 2:50 pm
From the Land of Green Ghosts is an autobiography. Pascal Khoo Thwe is from the Padaung ethnic minority in Burma — best known for the brass neck-rings worn by the women which elongate their necks — and was brought up with both the local animist traditions and Catholicism; the two religious traditions seem to have coexisted rather more easily than a [...]
The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas
13 November 2011 – 2:05 pm
I’ve just read two books for the Read The World challenge; one of them, Life in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, represents the downside of the challenge. It was somewhat interesting, but to be honest, reading it felt like doing homework. And there have been quite a few books which were either boring or just embarrassingly [...]
Life in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, ed. Anono Lieom Loeak, Veronica C. Kiluwe, Linda Crowl
10 November 2011 – 5:14 pm
Life in the Republic of the Marshall Islands is my book from the Marshall Islands for the Read The World challenge. It’s a compilation of short pieces published for the 25th anniversary of the Marshall Islands constitution. It includes a variety of subjects, including personal memoirs, accounts of traditional crafts, and more political pieces. The [...]