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The World Between Two Covers: Reading the Globe
A beguiling exploration of the joys of reading across boundaries, inspired by the author’s year-long journey through a book from every country.
Following an impulse to read more internationally, journalist Ann Morgan undertook first to define “the world” and then to find a story from each of 196 nations. Tireless in her quest and assisted by generous, far-flung strangers, Morgan discovered not only a treasury of world literature but also the keys to unlock it. Whether considering the difficulties faced by writers in developing nations, movingly illustrated by Burundian Marie-Thérese Toyi’s Weep Not, Refugee; tracing the use of local myths in the fantastically successful Samoan YA series Telesa; delving into questions of censorship and propaganda while sourcing a title from North Korea; or simply getting hold of The Corsair, the first Qatari novel to be translated into English, Morgan illuminates with wit, warmth, and insight how stories are written the world over and how place—geographical, historical, virtual—shapes the books we read and write.
337 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 5, 2015
50 people are currently reading
2757 people want to read
About the author
Ann Morgan
2 books344 followersAnn Morgan is a freelance writer and editor. She lives in south London and continues to blog about books at http://ayearofreadingtheworld.com
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December 9, 2015
As you may know, the idea here was to read a work of fiction from every country in the world IN ONE YEAR. It was inspired by AM’s realisation of how insular her reading had been throughout her entire life. She almost never read translated novels, only US & UK ones, like a lot of us. Who, me? Yeah, you. She points out that this insularity is encouraged by the universal recommendation concept of “if you like that then you’ll like this”.
With so much well-pitched material on hand, the prospect of seeking out stories from further afield feels a bit like being asked to abandon the bright supermarket aisles where everything is arranged just as we like it to forage for literary sustenance in the local park.
Along with many people I thought the account of this year of reading through the planet would be a mosaic of reviews of the books encountered, but it isn’t. The blog has the actual reviews. Instead, this book is an exploration of the difficulties and implications of trying to read a book from every country, and international book culture in general. Oh yeah. Uh huh.
SCOTLAND NO, TUVALU YES
She encounters a lot of heavy weather when she tries to find out how many countries there are in the world. What is a country? How do you reach a reasonable definition? If you consult the United Nations official list of 196 members you find that Taiwan is not there at all – only 21 other countries recognise it as an independent state, although it walks, talks and quacks like an independent state all the time. I mean, Taiwan is right there, you can see it. Likewise Scotland is not there, as it’s a part of the UK. But if you tell a Scottish person that Scotland is not a country you might get a Glasgow handshake. Whit? Boom! Stitch that, sonny!
In many ways, it’s a cute but silly idea. 12 of the 196 countries have a population of less than 100,000 – so they get one book each, as does Indonesia (population 255 million), Bangladesh (155 million) and Japan (126 million). The political boundaries of the world are as arbitrary as any other way of categorising humans. My own next reading challenge will be to read a novel by someone who is 7 feet tall, one by someone 6 feet 11 inches, and so on down to 3 feet. The problem is that there has only ever been one 7 foot tall novelist but there are 1 billion ones who were 5 feet 8 inches tall. Ah well.
LUSOPHONE!
Only 4% of books published in English are translations from other languages. When AM considers the case of Portuguese, she finds that there are 9 lusophone (new word!) countries with a combined population of 260 million, and in one year (2005) only ten books were translated from Portuguese.
AWKWARD!
If there’s a theme to this book it’s awkwardness. Discomfort. Things not fitting. Out of balance. What’s the word – koyaanisqatsi? Yes, that’ll do. When you have made some difficult decisions about what a country actually is (Palestine? Kosovo? Kurdistan?) then there’s the problems encountered by the authors themselves. Do they grok the very idea of a novel? If so, what do they want to say? They have to deal with Western cultural imperialism, with their own cultural impediments (maybe in their culture it is not right to make up stories displaying the less pleasant side of life) and with the forces of political and religious repression. They might come from a place of absolutely no books and no publishing. American critic Eric Larrabee commented as follows:
As an exercise in imagination, try to conceive of an author who 1) probably has never met another author; 2) owns no books; 3) is not known to his daily acquaintances as an author; 4) has no personal contact with his publisher; 5) is not certain where his book is on sale; and 6) does not think of himself as an author.
So AM has to go to some lengths to find something to read from some teensy countries. She got one book translated specifically so she could read it. (I sure hope she liked it!) I had to cringe as I read AM’s account of one book from a Pacific island which was a collection of oral folk tales some jolly NGO Westerners had got recorded and written down, as the book is the holy grail of cultural imperishability, and this here folk culture was visibly wilting. The result sounded ghastly, with stage directions. AM says it was “like a po-faced interpreter relaying a stand-up comedian’s routine”. And that is one of the very few places she lets us know what opinions she had of the books she read.
DEALING WITH CULTURE SHOCK (ENCOUNTERS WITH HOMOPHOBIA )
This was the most interesting chapter. I wasn’t so jazzed with the ins and outs of self publishing and ebooks and the dubiousness of translations and so forth, but the chapter about culture shock got my undivided attention:
Newcomers to Nepalese folk tales, for example may find the frequency with which coins are stuffed into animals’ rectums in the hope of making them appear to excrete gold disconcerting
She outlines very well what I think may be the central reason why there are so few non-Anglophone novels translated each year.
Without the context to understand the significance of these events we are left faltering, wrong-footed, unsure how to respond. Should we feel pity for the wife who is forced to submit at knifepoint or treat this as part of a ritualised performance enacted to formalise marriage? Are we supposed to laugh at the gold-stuffed donkey or disapprove of the owner for being cruel? Can we take what we read at face value or is there unknown contextual information that might temper these accounts? …We stare hesitantly at the things on offer, unsure where to start and what is expected of us, afraid of committing a faux pas.
And what about when you plunge in to a novel from, say, Papua New Guinea (AM’s example) and discover
That the casual homophobic slurs that pepper the narrative and the increasingly outlandish plot – which comes close to conflating homosexuality with paedophilia – make giving the novel the benefit of the doubt difficult… It dawns on us slowly that Stella (the author) expects us to share his protagonist’s prejudices, and the result is uncomfortable.
I should say it would be.
AM’s IRON DISCIPLINE
She read 197 books in one year. Now, for some YA readers on this site, that’s like a stroll in the park, but for most people that’s extreme. Last year I read 46 novels – well, not all the way through, I abandoned 12 of those. So yeah, 197 novels in one year, wow. This is how she did it:
I had to be very organised. I worked out the amount I needed to get through every day (around 150 pages to keep on track to read four books a week) and made sure I stuck to it. This meant reading for two hours on my commute (I was working full-time for most of the year) and an hour or two in the evening. I sometimes read in my lunch break too. In actual fact, the reading was only half the battle – writing the blog posts and doing all the research took as much time, so I got up early to spend an hour or two on this before I left for work.
Mind you, AM was always something of a freak reader – she ploughed through The Satanic Verses at age 11. Didn’t understand a word, but read every page anyway.
OKAAAAAAAAAYYY
This was something really worth doing but the present volume is ever so slightly earnest and teetering on the edge of being dull at times. It could so easily have been rescued if AM had included her reviews of the actual books – maybe not all 196 but the 20 best and 20 worst, say. That would have been fun fun fun whereas what we have here is worthy worthy worthy.
"Don't even think about it."
With so much well-pitched material on hand, the prospect of seeking out stories from further afield feels a bit like being asked to abandon the bright supermarket aisles where everything is arranged just as we like it to forage for literary sustenance in the local park.
Along with many people I thought the account of this year of reading through the planet would be a mosaic of reviews of the books encountered, but it isn’t. The blog has the actual reviews. Instead, this book is an exploration of the difficulties and implications of trying to read a book from every country, and international book culture in general. Oh yeah. Uh huh.
SCOTLAND NO, TUVALU YES
She encounters a lot of heavy weather when she tries to find out how many countries there are in the world. What is a country? How do you reach a reasonable definition? If you consult the United Nations official list of 196 members you find that Taiwan is not there at all – only 21 other countries recognise it as an independent state, although it walks, talks and quacks like an independent state all the time. I mean, Taiwan is right there, you can see it. Likewise Scotland is not there, as it’s a part of the UK. But if you tell a Scottish person that Scotland is not a country you might get a Glasgow handshake. Whit? Boom! Stitch that, sonny!
In many ways, it’s a cute but silly idea. 12 of the 196 countries have a population of less than 100,000 – so they get one book each, as does Indonesia (population 255 million), Bangladesh (155 million) and Japan (126 million). The political boundaries of the world are as arbitrary as any other way of categorising humans. My own next reading challenge will be to read a novel by someone who is 7 feet tall, one by someone 6 feet 11 inches, and so on down to 3 feet. The problem is that there has only ever been one 7 foot tall novelist but there are 1 billion ones who were 5 feet 8 inches tall. Ah well.
LUSOPHONE!
Only 4% of books published in English are translations from other languages. When AM considers the case of Portuguese, she finds that there are 9 lusophone (new word!) countries with a combined population of 260 million, and in one year (2005) only ten books were translated from Portuguese.
AWKWARD!
If there’s a theme to this book it’s awkwardness. Discomfort. Things not fitting. Out of balance. What’s the word – koyaanisqatsi? Yes, that’ll do. When you have made some difficult decisions about what a country actually is (Palestine? Kosovo? Kurdistan?) then there’s the problems encountered by the authors themselves. Do they grok the very idea of a novel? If so, what do they want to say? They have to deal with Western cultural imperialism, with their own cultural impediments (maybe in their culture it is not right to make up stories displaying the less pleasant side of life) and with the forces of political and religious repression. They might come from a place of absolutely no books and no publishing. American critic Eric Larrabee commented as follows:
As an exercise in imagination, try to conceive of an author who 1) probably has never met another author; 2) owns no books; 3) is not known to his daily acquaintances as an author; 4) has no personal contact with his publisher; 5) is not certain where his book is on sale; and 6) does not think of himself as an author.
So AM has to go to some lengths to find something to read from some teensy countries. She got one book translated specifically so she could read it. (I sure hope she liked it!) I had to cringe as I read AM’s account of one book from a Pacific island which was a collection of oral folk tales some jolly NGO Westerners had got recorded and written down, as the book is the holy grail of cultural imperishability, and this here folk culture was visibly wilting. The result sounded ghastly, with stage directions. AM says it was “like a po-faced interpreter relaying a stand-up comedian’s routine”. And that is one of the very few places she lets us know what opinions she had of the books she read.
DEALING WITH CULTURE SHOCK (ENCOUNTERS WITH HOMOPHOBIA )
This was the most interesting chapter. I wasn’t so jazzed with the ins and outs of self publishing and ebooks and the dubiousness of translations and so forth, but the chapter about culture shock got my undivided attention:
Newcomers to Nepalese folk tales, for example may find the frequency with which coins are stuffed into animals’ rectums in the hope of making them appear to excrete gold disconcerting
She outlines very well what I think may be the central reason why there are so few non-Anglophone novels translated each year.
Without the context to understand the significance of these events we are left faltering, wrong-footed, unsure how to respond. Should we feel pity for the wife who is forced to submit at knifepoint or treat this as part of a ritualised performance enacted to formalise marriage? Are we supposed to laugh at the gold-stuffed donkey or disapprove of the owner for being cruel? Can we take what we read at face value or is there unknown contextual information that might temper these accounts? …We stare hesitantly at the things on offer, unsure where to start and what is expected of us, afraid of committing a faux pas.
And what about when you plunge in to a novel from, say, Papua New Guinea (AM’s example) and discover
That the casual homophobic slurs that pepper the narrative and the increasingly outlandish plot – which comes close to conflating homosexuality with paedophilia – make giving the novel the benefit of the doubt difficult… It dawns on us slowly that Stella (the author) expects us to share his protagonist’s prejudices, and the result is uncomfortable.
I should say it would be.
AM’s IRON DISCIPLINE
She read 197 books in one year. Now, for some YA readers on this site, that’s like a stroll in the park, but for most people that’s extreme. Last year I read 46 novels – well, not all the way through, I abandoned 12 of those. So yeah, 197 novels in one year, wow. This is how she did it:
I had to be very organised. I worked out the amount I needed to get through every day (around 150 pages to keep on track to read four books a week) and made sure I stuck to it. This meant reading for two hours on my commute (I was working full-time for most of the year) and an hour or two in the evening. I sometimes read in my lunch break too. In actual fact, the reading was only half the battle – writing the blog posts and doing all the research took as much time, so I got up early to spend an hour or two on this before I left for work.
Mind you, AM was always something of a freak reader – she ploughed through The Satanic Verses at age 11. Didn’t understand a word, but read every page anyway.
OKAAAAAAAAAYYY
This was something really worth doing but the present volume is ever so slightly earnest and teetering on the edge of being dull at times. It could so easily have been rescued if AM had included her reviews of the actual books – maybe not all 196 but the 20 best and 20 worst, say. That would have been fun fun fun whereas what we have here is worthy worthy worthy.
"Don't even think about it."
reading-in-review
March 29, 2025World Books Challenge - Completed, With List!
I probably am not going to read this book, but my world books challenge post needs a home now that Goodreads no longer has the “writing” feature, and I’ve gotten some inspiration from this author’s book list, so here it goes.
My challenge is rather different from hers, first because she did hers in a year which to me sounds miserable; I always intended it as a long-term project and completed it over the course of about 15 years. Of course, the more you get the easier countries out of the way and close in on the tiniest and least literary ones, the more of a break you’re likely to want between the books you wind up with!
Also, and more importantly to the observer, we chose very different parameters. Morgan’s challenge is author-diversity-based, which is all well and good, but my plan from the beginning was to read a book primarily set in each country, to put them all on my mental map. During the course of the challenge I’ve leaned increasingly toward local authors, especially for more populous and/or literary countries, and my reading horizons have certainly expanded. But it was always most about learning about the world, and a fun benefit has been that whenever I hear a less-often-discussed country mentioned, I get to think “now what have I read that was set there? Ah yes” and feel like I know a little something about it.
My parameters have shifted in other ways too: I started out reading only fiction, but expanded to nonfiction as my general reading did. You’ll see quite a wide variety of genres represented here. My list of “countries” topped out at 201 and includes all U.N. member states plus a handful of places sufficiently distinct geographically, politically and/or culturally from the countries to which they technically belong that it makes sense to get their own book. The books need to be primarily set in the country, and if fiction, the protagonist should be from there; if nonfiction, the work should be about the country. As I read, I also replaced books with better-quality ones, or with ones that better suited the goals of my challenge, as I found them. It was never my intent to stop at one book per country (for about half the countries in the world, I have read more than one book at least partly set there), so where I’ve read multiples I list the best book in terms of quality as judged by me and/or fit for the challenge.
A note on the ratings: in general I would recommend anything rated 3.5 stars or above, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and caution the reader about anything rated 3 stars or below, with varying degrees of vehemence. I rarely give above 4 stars, and many of the books with a 4 star rating I would consider excellent. Books are unrated if I didn't feel I could fairly give a rating, either due to having read them too long ago or being too far from the intended audience.
Now the final list—sorted by continent for convenience—with links to my reviews:
North America and the Caribbean
24 countries
North America
Canada: The Strangers by Katherine Vermette - ★★★★½
United States: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren - ★★★★★
Mexico: Pierced by the Sun by Laura Esquivel - ★★★
Central America
Belize: Beka Lamb by Zee Edgell - ★★½
Costa Rica: Marcos Ramírez by Carlos Luis Fallas - ★★★½
El Salvador: Camino de hormigas by Miguel Huezo Mixco - ★★★
Guatemala: After the Bombs by Arturo Arias - ★★½
Honduras: Working Hard, Drinking Hard by Adrienne Pine - ★★★★
Nicaragua: The Country Under My Skin by Gioconda Belli - unrated
Panama: Come Together, Fall Apart by Cristina Henriquez - ★★★½
The Caribbean
Antigua & Barbuda: Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid - ★★★½
Bahamas: Thine Is The Kingdom by Garth Buckner - ★★½
Barbados: The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson - ★★½
Cuba: The Island of Eternal Love by Daina Chaviano - ★★
Dominica: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - unrated
Dominican Republic: In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez - unrated
Grenada: The Ladies Are Upstairs by Merle Collins - ★★★
Haiti: Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat - ★★★½
Jamaica: Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis Benn - ★★★½
Puerto Rico: The House on the Lagoon by Rosario Ferré - unrated
St. Kitts & Nevis: A State of Independence by Caryl Phillips - ★★½
St. Lucia: Nor Any Country by Garth St. Omer - ★★
St. Vincent & the Grenadines: Memoirs of My Childhood by Annice Browne - ★★½
Trinidad & Tobago: Crick Crack, Monkey by Merle Hodge - ★★★★
South America
12 countries
Argentina: The Peron Novel by Tomás Eloy Martínez - unrated
Bolivia: Carmela by Amalia Decker Márquez - ★★★½
Brazil: The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles - ★★★★★
Chile: The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende - ★★★★★
Colombia: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez - unrated
Ecuador: Huasipungo by Jorge Icaza - ★★½
Guyana: The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q by Sharon Maas - ★★★
Paraguay: Son of Man by Augusto Roa Bastos - ★★★½
Peru: The Discreet Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa - ★★★
Suriname: The Cost of Sugar by Cynthia McLeod - ★★★
Uruguay: The Invisible Mountain by Carolina De Robertis - ★★★½
Venezuela: Things Are Never So Bad They Can't Get Worse by William Neuman - ★★★★½
Africa
54 countries
North Africa
Algeria: The Lovers of Algeria by Anouar Benmalek - ★★★
Egypt: Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz - ★★★
Libya: The Bleeding of the Stone by Ibrahim al-Koni - unrated
Morocco: The Harem Within by Fatema Mernissi - unrated
Tunisia: The Pillar of Salt by Albert Memmi - ★★★★
West Africa
Benin: Amazons of Black Sparta by Stanley Alpern - ★★★½
Burkina Faso: Thomas Sankara by Ernest Harsh - ★★
Cape Verde: The Last Will & Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo by Germano Almeida - ★½
Gambia: Reading the Ceiling by Dayo Forster - ★★½
Ghana: The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah - ★★★★
Guinea: The Dark Child by Camara Laye - ★★★½
Guinea-Bissau: The Ultimate Tragedy by Abdulai Sila - ★★
Ivory Coast: Aya by Marguerite Abouet - ★★★½
Liberia: The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper - ★★★★½
Mali: Segu by Maryse Condé - ★★
Mauritania: The Desert and the Drum by Mbarek Ould Beyrouk - ★★★
Niger: In Sorcery's Shadow by Paul Stoller - ★★½
Nigeria: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - ★★★★★
Senegal: God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembène - ★★★★
Sierra Leone: The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna - ★★★½
Togo: The Village of Waiting by George Packer - ★★★½
Central Africa
Cameroon: Houseboy by Ferdinand Oyono - ★★½
Central African Republic: Co-Wives, Co-Widows by Adrienne Yabouza - ★★★½
Chad: African Rice Heart by Emily Star Wilkins - ★★½
Democratic Republic of the Congo: The Ponds of Kalambayi by Mike Tidwell - ★★★★
Equatorial Guinea: Ekomo by María Nsue Angüe - ★★★½
Gabon: Mema by Daniel M. Mengara - ★★★½
Republic of the Congo: Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou - ★★★
São Tomé & Príncipe: Equator by Miguel Sousa Tavares - ★★
East Africa
Burundi: Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder - ★★★
Djibouti: The Land Without Shadows by Abdourahman A. Waberi - unrated
Eritrea: My Fathers' Daughter by Hannah Pool - ★★★½
Ethiopia: Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste - ★★★
Kenya: A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o - unrated
Rwanda: Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga - unrated
Somalia: The Orchard of Lost Souls by Nadifa Mohamed - ★★★
South Sudan: Emma's War by Deborah Scroggins - ★★★★
Sudan: Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih - ★★½
Tanzania: Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah - ★★
Uganda: Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi - ★★★★½
Southern Africa
Angola: The Return of the Water Spirit by Pepetela - ★★★
Botswana: Maru by Bessie Head - ★★★
Comoros: Last of the Pirates by Samantha Weinberg - ★★★½
Lesotho: Singing Away the Hunger by Mpho M'Atsepo Nthunya - ★★★½
Madagascar: Beyond the Rice Fields by Naivo - ★★★½
Malawi: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba - ★★★½
Mauritius: The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah - ★★
Mozambique: Neighbours by Lília Momplé - ★★★½
Namibia: The Purple Violet of Oshaantu by Neshani Andreas - ★★★½
Seychelles: Brothers of the Sea by D.R. Sherman - ★½
South Africa: Fiela's Child by Dalene Matthee - ★★★★
Swaziland: When the Ground Is Hard by Malla Nunn - ★★★½
Zambia: Patchwork by Ellen Banda-Aaku - ★★★★
Zimbabwe: Zenzele by J. Nozipo Maraire - ★★★★
Europe
49 countries
Western Europe
Andorra: The Land of Right Up and Down by Eva-Lis Wuorio - unrated
Austria: The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig - ★★★★
Belgium: The Misfortunates by Dimitri Verhulst - ★★★
Denmark: The Murder of Halland by Pia Juul - ★★½
Finland: The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson - ★★★½
France: Inseparable by Simone de Beauvoir - ★★★★
Germany: The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll - ★★★★
Greenland: An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie - ★★★½
Iceland: Blue Fox by Sjón - ★★★
Ireland: Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy - ★★★★½
Italy: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante - ★★★★
Liechtenstein: Ludmila by Paul Gallico - ★★½
Luxembourg: Milly's Story by Milly Thill - ★★½
Malta: The Kappillan of Malta by Nicholas Monserrat - ★★★½
Monaco: The Grimaldis of Monaco by Anne Edwards - ★★½
Netherlands: The Dinner by Herman Koch - ★★
Norway: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset - ★★★★
Portugal: Raised from the Ground by José Saramago - ★★★
San Marino: The Republic of San Marino by Giuseppe Rossi - ★½
Spain: Nada by Carmen Laforet - ★★★★
Sweden: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman - ★★★
Switzerland: Heidi by Johanna Spyri - unrated
United Kingdom: South Riding by Winifred Holtby - ★★★★½
Vatican City: Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King - ★★★
Continued in the comments due to length restrictions!
I probably am not going to read this book, but my world books challenge post needs a home now that Goodreads no longer has the “writing” feature, and I’ve gotten some inspiration from this author’s book list, so here it goes.
My challenge is rather different from hers, first because she did hers in a year which to me sounds miserable; I always intended it as a long-term project and completed it over the course of about 15 years. Of course, the more you get the easier countries out of the way and close in on the tiniest and least literary ones, the more of a break you’re likely to want between the books you wind up with!
Also, and more importantly to the observer, we chose very different parameters. Morgan’s challenge is author-diversity-based, which is all well and good, but my plan from the beginning was to read a book primarily set in each country, to put them all on my mental map. During the course of the challenge I’ve leaned increasingly toward local authors, especially for more populous and/or literary countries, and my reading horizons have certainly expanded. But it was always most about learning about the world, and a fun benefit has been that whenever I hear a less-often-discussed country mentioned, I get to think “now what have I read that was set there? Ah yes” and feel like I know a little something about it.
My parameters have shifted in other ways too: I started out reading only fiction, but expanded to nonfiction as my general reading did. You’ll see quite a wide variety of genres represented here. My list of “countries” topped out at 201 and includes all U.N. member states plus a handful of places sufficiently distinct geographically, politically and/or culturally from the countries to which they technically belong that it makes sense to get their own book. The books need to be primarily set in the country, and if fiction, the protagonist should be from there; if nonfiction, the work should be about the country. As I read, I also replaced books with better-quality ones, or with ones that better suited the goals of my challenge, as I found them. It was never my intent to stop at one book per country (for about half the countries in the world, I have read more than one book at least partly set there), so where I’ve read multiples I list the best book in terms of quality as judged by me and/or fit for the challenge.
A note on the ratings: in general I would recommend anything rated 3.5 stars or above, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and caution the reader about anything rated 3 stars or below, with varying degrees of vehemence. I rarely give above 4 stars, and many of the books with a 4 star rating I would consider excellent. Books are unrated if I didn't feel I could fairly give a rating, either due to having read them too long ago or being too far from the intended audience.
Now the final list—sorted by continent for convenience—with links to my reviews:
North America and the Caribbean
24 countries
North America
Canada: The Strangers by Katherine Vermette - ★★★★½
United States: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren - ★★★★★
Mexico: Pierced by the Sun by Laura Esquivel - ★★★
Central America
Belize: Beka Lamb by Zee Edgell - ★★½
Costa Rica: Marcos Ramírez by Carlos Luis Fallas - ★★★½
El Salvador: Camino de hormigas by Miguel Huezo Mixco - ★★★
Guatemala: After the Bombs by Arturo Arias - ★★½
Honduras: Working Hard, Drinking Hard by Adrienne Pine - ★★★★
Nicaragua: The Country Under My Skin by Gioconda Belli - unrated
Panama: Come Together, Fall Apart by Cristina Henriquez - ★★★½
The Caribbean
Antigua & Barbuda: Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid - ★★★½
Bahamas: Thine Is The Kingdom by Garth Buckner - ★★½
Barbados: The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson - ★★½
Cuba: The Island of Eternal Love by Daina Chaviano - ★★
Dominica: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - unrated
Dominican Republic: In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez - unrated
Grenada: The Ladies Are Upstairs by Merle Collins - ★★★
Haiti: Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat - ★★★½
Jamaica: Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis Benn - ★★★½
Puerto Rico: The House on the Lagoon by Rosario Ferré - unrated
St. Kitts & Nevis: A State of Independence by Caryl Phillips - ★★½
St. Lucia: Nor Any Country by Garth St. Omer - ★★
St. Vincent & the Grenadines: Memoirs of My Childhood by Annice Browne - ★★½
Trinidad & Tobago: Crick Crack, Monkey by Merle Hodge - ★★★★
South America
12 countries
Argentina: The Peron Novel by Tomás Eloy Martínez - unrated
Bolivia: Carmela by Amalia Decker Márquez - ★★★½
Brazil: The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles - ★★★★★
Chile: The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende - ★★★★★
Colombia: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez - unrated
Ecuador: Huasipungo by Jorge Icaza - ★★½
Guyana: The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q by Sharon Maas - ★★★
Paraguay: Son of Man by Augusto Roa Bastos - ★★★½
Peru: The Discreet Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa - ★★★
Suriname: The Cost of Sugar by Cynthia McLeod - ★★★
Uruguay: The Invisible Mountain by Carolina De Robertis - ★★★½
Venezuela: Things Are Never So Bad They Can't Get Worse by William Neuman - ★★★★½
Africa
54 countries
North Africa
Algeria: The Lovers of Algeria by Anouar Benmalek - ★★★
Egypt: Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz - ★★★
Libya: The Bleeding of the Stone by Ibrahim al-Koni - unrated
Morocco: The Harem Within by Fatema Mernissi - unrated
Tunisia: The Pillar of Salt by Albert Memmi - ★★★★
West Africa
Benin: Amazons of Black Sparta by Stanley Alpern - ★★★½
Burkina Faso: Thomas Sankara by Ernest Harsh - ★★
Cape Verde: The Last Will & Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo by Germano Almeida - ★½
Gambia: Reading the Ceiling by Dayo Forster - ★★½
Ghana: The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah - ★★★★
Guinea: The Dark Child by Camara Laye - ★★★½
Guinea-Bissau: The Ultimate Tragedy by Abdulai Sila - ★★
Ivory Coast: Aya by Marguerite Abouet - ★★★½
Liberia: The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper - ★★★★½
Mali: Segu by Maryse Condé - ★★
Mauritania: The Desert and the Drum by Mbarek Ould Beyrouk - ★★★
Niger: In Sorcery's Shadow by Paul Stoller - ★★½
Nigeria: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - ★★★★★
Senegal: God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembène - ★★★★
Sierra Leone: The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna - ★★★½
Togo: The Village of Waiting by George Packer - ★★★½
Central Africa
Cameroon: Houseboy by Ferdinand Oyono - ★★½
Central African Republic: Co-Wives, Co-Widows by Adrienne Yabouza - ★★★½
Chad: African Rice Heart by Emily Star Wilkins - ★★½
Democratic Republic of the Congo: The Ponds of Kalambayi by Mike Tidwell - ★★★★
Equatorial Guinea: Ekomo by María Nsue Angüe - ★★★½
Gabon: Mema by Daniel M. Mengara - ★★★½
Republic of the Congo: Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou - ★★★
São Tomé & Príncipe: Equator by Miguel Sousa Tavares - ★★
East Africa
Burundi: Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder - ★★★
Djibouti: The Land Without Shadows by Abdourahman A. Waberi - unrated
Eritrea: My Fathers' Daughter by Hannah Pool - ★★★½
Ethiopia: Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste - ★★★
Kenya: A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o - unrated
Rwanda: Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga - unrated
Somalia: The Orchard of Lost Souls by Nadifa Mohamed - ★★★
South Sudan: Emma's War by Deborah Scroggins - ★★★★
Sudan: Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih - ★★½
Tanzania: Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah - ★★
Uganda: Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi - ★★★★½
Southern Africa
Angola: The Return of the Water Spirit by Pepetela - ★★★
Botswana: Maru by Bessie Head - ★★★
Comoros: Last of the Pirates by Samantha Weinberg - ★★★½
Lesotho: Singing Away the Hunger by Mpho M'Atsepo Nthunya - ★★★½
Madagascar: Beyond the Rice Fields by Naivo - ★★★½
Malawi: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba - ★★★½
Mauritius: The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah - ★★
Mozambique: Neighbours by Lília Momplé - ★★★½
Namibia: The Purple Violet of Oshaantu by Neshani Andreas - ★★★½
Seychelles: Brothers of the Sea by D.R. Sherman - ★½
South Africa: Fiela's Child by Dalene Matthee - ★★★★
Swaziland: When the Ground Is Hard by Malla Nunn - ★★★½
Zambia: Patchwork by Ellen Banda-Aaku - ★★★★
Zimbabwe: Zenzele by J. Nozipo Maraire - ★★★★
Europe
49 countries
Western Europe
Andorra: The Land of Right Up and Down by Eva-Lis Wuorio - unrated
Austria: The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig - ★★★★
Belgium: The Misfortunates by Dimitri Verhulst - ★★★
Denmark: The Murder of Halland by Pia Juul - ★★½
Finland: The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson - ★★★½
France: Inseparable by Simone de Beauvoir - ★★★★
Germany: The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll - ★★★★
Greenland: An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie - ★★★½
Iceland: Blue Fox by Sjón - ★★★
Ireland: Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy - ★★★★½
Italy: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante - ★★★★
Liechtenstein: Ludmila by Paul Gallico - ★★½
Luxembourg: Milly's Story by Milly Thill - ★★½
Malta: The Kappillan of Malta by Nicholas Monserrat - ★★★½
Monaco: The Grimaldis of Monaco by Anne Edwards - ★★½
Netherlands: The Dinner by Herman Koch - ★★
Norway: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset - ★★★★
Portugal: Raised from the Ground by José Saramago - ★★★
San Marino: The Republic of San Marino by Giuseppe Rossi - ★½
Spain: Nada by Carmen Laforet - ★★★★
Sweden: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman - ★★★
Switzerland: Heidi by Johanna Spyri - unrated
United Kingdom: South Riding by Winifred Holtby - ★★★★½
Vatican City: Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King - ★★★
Continued in the comments due to length restrictions!
February 12, 2015
I was really disappointed with this book as I thought it was going to be about the books the author read during her year of reading the world. To me the most interesting bit of the whole book was the bibliography at the back! Instead of being about the books she read it was about such things as what makes a nation; how she came to choose the countries she included in her list of one hundred and ninety six books; the invidious influence of British Imperialism and American domination and how difficult it is for authors to have their work published in some countries.
If I'd wanted to read about geography, history of the world or censorship I would have been reading books about those subjects. Instead I wanted to read about the author's experience of reading books outside her comfort zone. I really didn't want to know about her agonising over which countries to include and why she included them and how much other people she came across influenced her choice of books. Overall, apart from feeling totally mislead by the blurb I found this book pretty indigestible and it read as though the author didn't want to waste any of her research. It seemed to me as though she just threw it all at the page and left the reader to pick out the bits they wanted.
So if you want to read a potted history of books and publishing across the world then read this book but if you want to know about the books she read you'll need to read them yourself - which is where the bibliography comes in handy. If you want to read a book about the contents of books then this isn't for you.
If I'd wanted to read about geography, history of the world or censorship I would have been reading books about those subjects. Instead I wanted to read about the author's experience of reading books outside her comfort zone. I really didn't want to know about her agonising over which countries to include and why she included them and how much other people she came across influenced her choice of books. Overall, apart from feeling totally mislead by the blurb I found this book pretty indigestible and it read as though the author didn't want to waste any of her research. It seemed to me as though she just threw it all at the page and left the reader to pick out the bits they wanted.
So if you want to read a potted history of books and publishing across the world then read this book but if you want to know about the books she read you'll need to read them yourself - which is where the bibliography comes in handy. If you want to read a book about the contents of books then this isn't for you.
August 24, 2017
I love undertaking reading projects, such as Ann Morgan does as the basis for Reading the World: Confessions of a Literary Explorer. I have never, however, read only translated literature throughout the course of a year, as Morgan does. She decided, when the Olympics came to London in 2012, that she would read one work published in every country in the world during the course of the year, and blog about them. This sounds like an easier project than she found it, on the face of it; firstly, the difficulty of deciding how many countries are in the world came about (the numbers differ wildly dependent on who is being asked), and is discussed in depth in the first chapter, before she discusses the trouble which she sometimes had in getting her hands on a single book from some of the countries.
I had read several mixed reviews about Reading the World before I began to read, and the doubt which some readers have had in Morgan's approach to her book are, I feel, justified. I thought that Reading the World would be like Nina Sankovitch's wonderful account of a yearly reading journey, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, with a lot of focus upon the books chosen, the reasons for them, and a series of personal thoughts which follow the reading. Instead, Morgan presents what feels like a series of loosely connected essays, talking at length about the ways in which we define world literature, and addressing things like cultural identity and heritage, and the kinds of books which tend to be translated into English.
The majority of the books which Morgan read during 2012 are not even mentioned in the body of the text; rather, they have been fashioned into a list at the back of the book, which is ordered alphabetically by country. These entries do not always include the translator, and feel a little inconsistent as a result.
Reading the World is undoubtedly an intelligent book, but it is not one which I would recommend to the general reader. For the most part, Morgan's prose is fine, but in several places it came across as clunky, repetitive, and even a little patronising. There is an academic, or perhaps just a highbrow, feel to it, which does not make it an easy tome to dip in and out of at will, like many other books about books tend to be; it errs toward the heavy-going in places.
It isn't that Reading the World is an uninteresting book; it is simply not at all what I was expecting. I would go as far to say that it is more involved with the translation and publishing processes, than with reading the end results. I did read Reading the World through to its conclusion, but did not find it a very engaging book. All in all, the ideas which went toward the book were far better than its execution, which seems a great shame. I have, perhaps fittingly, left my copy in one of those sweet little free libraries in France.
I had read several mixed reviews about Reading the World before I began to read, and the doubt which some readers have had in Morgan's approach to her book are, I feel, justified. I thought that Reading the World would be like Nina Sankovitch's wonderful account of a yearly reading journey, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, with a lot of focus upon the books chosen, the reasons for them, and a series of personal thoughts which follow the reading. Instead, Morgan presents what feels like a series of loosely connected essays, talking at length about the ways in which we define world literature, and addressing things like cultural identity and heritage, and the kinds of books which tend to be translated into English.
The majority of the books which Morgan read during 2012 are not even mentioned in the body of the text; rather, they have been fashioned into a list at the back of the book, which is ordered alphabetically by country. These entries do not always include the translator, and feel a little inconsistent as a result.
Reading the World is undoubtedly an intelligent book, but it is not one which I would recommend to the general reader. For the most part, Morgan's prose is fine, but in several places it came across as clunky, repetitive, and even a little patronising. There is an academic, or perhaps just a highbrow, feel to it, which does not make it an easy tome to dip in and out of at will, like many other books about books tend to be; it errs toward the heavy-going in places.
It isn't that Reading the World is an uninteresting book; it is simply not at all what I was expecting. I would go as far to say that it is more involved with the translation and publishing processes, than with reading the end results. I did read Reading the World through to its conclusion, but did not find it a very engaging book. All in all, the ideas which went toward the book were far better than its execution, which seems a great shame. I have, perhaps fittingly, left my copy in one of those sweet little free libraries in France.
October 13, 2015
The world came to the UK in 2012 when we hosted the Olympics, and as a challenge Ann Morgan decided that this was the time to discover the literary landscape of the world. Whilst the UK and Europe has a long history of books and reading, a number of countries don’t have this aspect to their culture; sometimes because they have a predominately oral history other times because the authorities don’t permit artistic expression.
First she had to choose the countries that she was to read from. Fairly easy you would think, but nothing is that straightforward. For example, the UK considers Taiwan to be an independent country, but China has a very different opinion on this. Having settled on her list of 196 countries (plus one) the next challenge was to find a piece of literary work from that country; that had been written down; and translated into English.
So begins her walk through the world’s fictional topography. For every book she chooses there are lots that she misses out on, but each piece gives a flavour of the culture of the country of origin. This perspective can be lost when the book is translated as you are getting as much from the translator as you were from the author. Throughout the book she considers the state of global literature, the spectre of state censorship and how writing can define a countries national character. There is an interesting chapter on the way that the internet is able to bring together a varied and diverse set of readers, and why so few of the 100,000 books published every year in the UK are translated ones.
But in some ways this book was a bit of a let down. I was hoping for much more on the actual books Morgan read; her feelings and thoughts of the text and stories as she roamed the world. Whilst there is a full list of the books that she read for each of the countries selected at the back of the book, it was such a shame, because the promise of Reading the World as indicated by the title wasn’t really there.
First she had to choose the countries that she was to read from. Fairly easy you would think, but nothing is that straightforward. For example, the UK considers Taiwan to be an independent country, but China has a very different opinion on this. Having settled on her list of 196 countries (plus one) the next challenge was to find a piece of literary work from that country; that had been written down; and translated into English.
So begins her walk through the world’s fictional topography. For every book she chooses there are lots that she misses out on, but each piece gives a flavour of the culture of the country of origin. This perspective can be lost when the book is translated as you are getting as much from the translator as you were from the author. Throughout the book she considers the state of global literature, the spectre of state censorship and how writing can define a countries national character. There is an interesting chapter on the way that the internet is able to bring together a varied and diverse set of readers, and why so few of the 100,000 books published every year in the UK are translated ones.
But in some ways this book was a bit of a let down. I was hoping for much more on the actual books Morgan read; her feelings and thoughts of the text and stories as she roamed the world. Whilst there is a full list of the books that she read for each of the countries selected at the back of the book, it was such a shame, because the promise of Reading the World as indicated by the title wasn’t really there.
April 7, 2015
(2.5) Morgan, a freelance writer and book blogger, devoted 2012 to reading one book from each country of the world. If you’ve come to this expecting a thorough rundown of those nearly 200 books – how she chose them, what they’re about and what she thought – you will be disappointed. Many blog-to-book adaptations repeat content from blog entries, or streamline the year’s activities into an accelerated narrative. Morgan does neither; not a single paragraph from her blog made it into the book. This is not, then, just another bibliomemoir. A better balance could have been struck between recycled blog content and academic musings on postcolonial literature and censorship. An interest in the politics of literature in translation would be a boon to anyone attempting this.
See my full review at Shiny New Books.
Bibliomemoirs I’d recommend as an alternative (if that’s your thing): How to Be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis
My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead
See my full review at Shiny New Books.
Bibliomemoirs I’d recommend as an alternative (if that’s your thing): How to Be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis
My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead
May 27, 2015
In 2012 Ann Morgan, a freelance writer, editor and blogger, set herself the goal of reading one book from every country in the world, sharing her reviews through her blog, AYearofReadingtheWorld.com.
The World Between Two Covers is in small part the story of her reading adventures, but is more fully an academic examination of the challenges she faced in sourcing world literature.
Her first task was to determine exactly what defines a country, apparently there is some dispute, though she eventually settled on a list of 196. Morgan was then faced a number of challenges in selecting representative texts from each country including availability (only around 4% of books published in English are translated from other languages), censorship, technology and cultural identity. The World Between Two Covers examines these issues both within a global context, and within the framework of Morgan's personal challenge.
"The truth is, we as individuals will never be wise enough or cultured enough or fast enough or long-lived enough to read the world as deeply and thoroughly as it deserves – and we never have been. We can only fail. So we have a choice: we can stick with what we know, or we can embrace the impossibility of reading world literature properly and jump right in – ‘feel the fear and do it anyway'."
I found The World Between Two Covers to be an interesting read, highlighting the issues at play in reading world literature, especially because I'm in my second year of participating in a similar, though far less ambitious challenge {Around the World in 12 Books}, requiring I read 12 books over the course of the year, each set in a different country, across six continents. This book has inspired me to dig a little deeper than I have previously in selecting books for the challenge.
August 18, 2022
Many of the other reviewers of this book are disappointed, because the books read by Ann are mentioned to illustrate her points, but few are discussed in detail. However, for a person like myself who regularly construct book challenges based on places or time periods, this was a fascinating read as it explores some of the benefits and challenges of reading translated fiction. I didn't realise how few books actually get translated and thus how limited my exposure remains to non-English literature. Ann's Reading the World blog has been a resource to me for years and I hope that she'll continue spotlighting these books.
July 22, 2019
What this book is not: a review or summary of books read.
What this book is: an interesting conversation about how one reads the globe.
Ann Morgan talks through topics such as why she chose to read a book from every country (plus a few) in a year, cultural identity, publishing and translation perspectives, dealing with culture shock, censorship, empathy, politics, how a country is determined, and more. I've found myself much more contemplative about what and how I read.
I'd recommend this to anyone interested in reading more globally.
What this book is: an interesting conversation about how one reads the globe.
Ann Morgan talks through topics such as why she chose to read a book from every country (plus a few) in a year, cultural identity, publishing and translation perspectives, dealing with culture shock, censorship, empathy, politics, how a country is determined, and more. I've found myself much more contemplative about what and how I read.
I'd recommend this to anyone interested in reading more globally.
March 11, 2024
I’m glad I found this book at the library. I was all gung ho to buy it at B&N. Glad I didn’t, as it honestly isn’t my kind of book. Ann Morgan explores all the philosophical reasons behind why she decided to read a book from each country of the world...how many countries are there?...what is a country, really?...how do you choose something representative from each place? I wasn’t terribly interested in all that discourse; I kept waiting to hear about the books she chose and read. And the books she chose and read was pretty much confined to a list of twenty pages in the back. Quite disappointing, really.
unable-to-finish
October 7, 2017I'm not sure who the audience for this book is - but probably not readers like me who like reading memoirs about books. It is more of a Ph.D thesis on the world of reading and seems to largely exclude her personal experience with particular books. There is a nice list of books she has read from around the world at the end - but it isn't even annotated. Just a list of titles and authors.
August 16, 2015
My friends here on Goodreads know I read, in part, by a plan I call My Big Fat Reading Project. I have an essay I wrote about it that lives on my profile page. I have had different reading plans in my life of reading so when I heard about Ann Morgan's project to read a book from every country of the world in one year, I had to find out more. The blow by blow accounts of her project can be found on her blog: A Year of Reading the World at http://ayearofreadingtheworld.com/ where she reviews each book she read.
The World Between Two Covers is a collection of essays about the entire experience in which she relates her reasons for the project, the difficulties she encountered, all kinds of cool nerdy info on translated literature, and the changes she went through due to her reading.
I loved it. She includes a list of what she read and that has now become yet another reading plan for me.
The World Between Two Covers is a collection of essays about the entire experience in which she relates her reasons for the project, the difficulties she encountered, all kinds of cool nerdy info on translated literature, and the changes she went through due to her reading.
I loved it. She includes a list of what she read and that has now become yet another reading plan for me.
June 13, 2015
I read this book under the title "Reading the World"
“As readers, we don’t travel. In fact for many of us that’s precisely the point: we open books to experience ideas and places that we don’t have the budget, time or stomach to go through in real life”
Ann Morgan set herself the challenge of reading a book from every country in the world. What a task that turned out to be! As her researches got underway in 2011, the remit gradually became expansive, and at times unwieldy, with many futile and frustrating dead ends. Even the basic premise of identifying the countries that she was going to feature was far from simple: as a starting point, would it be the 195 sovereign states named by the UN? But what of Taiwan making it 196, or indeed Palestine or Kosovo (and what of Kurdistan?). Creating the definitive country list was no simple matter. Indeed, would she use the yardstick defined by UN recognition or was it to be something different? The final list eventually settled at 196 (ish) and is entitled “The 196 (…and Kurdistan)”.
The very first book that was flagged for the author was Cloudstreet by Tim Winton (set in Perth, Australia), which features is a really excellent choice. But that was only the start of her biblioglobic adventure (the word bibliogobe exists according to the author, the adjective I made up!).
This is a scholarly exploration of the publishing industry, geography and what is meant by indigineity. It often meanders into philosophical musings on the plight of authors, and specifically the huge hurdles encountered by non Anglophone writers. If English is not your first language, how do you get your books out there amongst the reading public? Translated works, she cites, according to a 2013 survey by Literature Across Frontiers, amounted to 4.37% of literary works published in the UK and Ireland in 2008. That is a minuscule proportion of the published oeuvre.
How did she come to set herself this challenge, you may wonder? A seminal moment came early on Valentine’s Day 1989. Ayatollah Khomeini imposed a Fatwa on Salman Rushdie and when Ann eventually found a copy of The Satanic Verses at the tender age of 11, she avidly sat down to read it; but discovered she was way in over her head. It nevertheless sowed a seed for championing the written word, which she goes on to explore in this book. Freedom to write and be published is integral to her core thinking and belief.
The obstacles to finding the definitive reading list were legion. She cites China as clamping down on free expression, thus limiting the books available to her. Essentially, in actual fact, she feels “that nowhere is censorship free“. Finding something suitable for North Korea, where censorship is, of course, fundamental to the preservation of the regime, was a journey in itself. Identifying fiction that wasn’t tainted with politics and history, the workpiece of the government, was a mammoth task. Or finding herself confronted with the intricacies of the Ghorkaland question (a proposed state in India in the Darjeeling Hills) – another facet of Weltpolitik to consider…. and so it went on.
She also addresses the issue of translation and the incredible task of the translator to capture and then convey any given text with a deftness that comes only with experience. The complexities of the translator’s job can be manifold. Take the simple task of conveying ‘snow’ to someone who has never experienced it, nor is it in their vocabulary – Tété-Michel Kpomassie returned to Togo having lived in Greenland but in his native language Mina, there is no word. Overall, credits to translators are few and far between, which is a real oversight (we interviewed three top translators in a previous blogpost and you can access their stories here).
Ploughing through 200 odd books is a mammoth task, and not only did she focus on her own task but she digresses into what it means to be self published, the vagaries of the publishing industry and the phenomenon that is the internet today and what effect that has across the book board. She shares amazing facts with her readers – that 500 new British and Irish Books arrive at the Cambridge University Library EVERY DAY; or that Vatican City has the only ATM with instructions in Latin….
“From the faceless register of place names page by page, these regions ceased to be mysterious blanks or dead bundles of facts and figures and became living, breathing entities, as if their stories had made them real.” Gradually it seems she felt she was becoming part of the global community rather than a mere observer of other cultures.
“As readers, we don’t travel. In fact for many of us that’s precisely the point: we open books to experience ideas and places that we don’t have the budget, time or stomach to go through in real life”
Ann Morgan set herself the challenge of reading a book from every country in the world. What a task that turned out to be! As her researches got underway in 2011, the remit gradually became expansive, and at times unwieldy, with many futile and frustrating dead ends. Even the basic premise of identifying the countries that she was going to feature was far from simple: as a starting point, would it be the 195 sovereign states named by the UN? But what of Taiwan making it 196, or indeed Palestine or Kosovo (and what of Kurdistan?). Creating the definitive country list was no simple matter. Indeed, would she use the yardstick defined by UN recognition or was it to be something different? The final list eventually settled at 196 (ish) and is entitled “The 196 (…and Kurdistan)”.
The very first book that was flagged for the author was Cloudstreet by Tim Winton (set in Perth, Australia), which features is a really excellent choice. But that was only the start of her biblioglobic adventure (the word bibliogobe exists according to the author, the adjective I made up!).
This is a scholarly exploration of the publishing industry, geography and what is meant by indigineity. It often meanders into philosophical musings on the plight of authors, and specifically the huge hurdles encountered by non Anglophone writers. If English is not your first language, how do you get your books out there amongst the reading public? Translated works, she cites, according to a 2013 survey by Literature Across Frontiers, amounted to 4.37% of literary works published in the UK and Ireland in 2008. That is a minuscule proportion of the published oeuvre.
How did she come to set herself this challenge, you may wonder? A seminal moment came early on Valentine’s Day 1989. Ayatollah Khomeini imposed a Fatwa on Salman Rushdie and when Ann eventually found a copy of The Satanic Verses at the tender age of 11, she avidly sat down to read it; but discovered she was way in over her head. It nevertheless sowed a seed for championing the written word, which she goes on to explore in this book. Freedom to write and be published is integral to her core thinking and belief.
The obstacles to finding the definitive reading list were legion. She cites China as clamping down on free expression, thus limiting the books available to her. Essentially, in actual fact, she feels “that nowhere is censorship free“. Finding something suitable for North Korea, where censorship is, of course, fundamental to the preservation of the regime, was a journey in itself. Identifying fiction that wasn’t tainted with politics and history, the workpiece of the government, was a mammoth task. Or finding herself confronted with the intricacies of the Ghorkaland question (a proposed state in India in the Darjeeling Hills) – another facet of Weltpolitik to consider…. and so it went on.
She also addresses the issue of translation and the incredible task of the translator to capture and then convey any given text with a deftness that comes only with experience. The complexities of the translator’s job can be manifold. Take the simple task of conveying ‘snow’ to someone who has never experienced it, nor is it in their vocabulary – Tété-Michel Kpomassie returned to Togo having lived in Greenland but in his native language Mina, there is no word. Overall, credits to translators are few and far between, which is a real oversight (we interviewed three top translators in a previous blogpost and you can access their stories here).
Ploughing through 200 odd books is a mammoth task, and not only did she focus on her own task but she digresses into what it means to be self published, the vagaries of the publishing industry and the phenomenon that is the internet today and what effect that has across the book board. She shares amazing facts with her readers – that 500 new British and Irish Books arrive at the Cambridge University Library EVERY DAY; or that Vatican City has the only ATM with instructions in Latin….
“From the faceless register of place names page by page, these regions ceased to be mysterious blanks or dead bundles of facts and figures and became living, breathing entities, as if their stories had made them real.” Gradually it seems she felt she was becoming part of the global community rather than a mere observer of other cultures.
March 10, 2015
Blogger Ann Morgan spent a year reading books from nearly every nation, 196 (plus one) books in all. This is the story of why she did it, how she accomplished it, and many questions and thoughts that arose in the course of the project.
I was surprised that the book was not very much about the individual books she read, but that was fine with me, since I was more interested in the logistics (How did she find get books from North Korea? How did she decide what constitutes a country? What was the quality of the translation into English?) If you want to know about the books as she read them, they're still on her blog. But the book cover and marketing led me to believe that this would be more about the books themselves, so I'm not surprised that some readers are disappointed.
It's a monumental undertaking to try to cram into a single year. Just reading the books would have taken longer than that, I would have thought, and the time it took to find possible candidates, track them down and acquire them was another full time job. Add to that the regular blog posts and responses to interested followers, and it's quite an impressive accomplishment.
Morgan is a thinking reader and she examines such topics as censorship, the influence of English on the rest of the world, the internet's effect on focused reading, the nature of translation and the responsibilities of translators. She also talks about libraries, bookshops, her bookshelves, and reading on the subway.
She even talks about the books themselves from time to time, but I suspect that out of any collection of two hundred books, only about a quarter to a third of them will be worthwhile and that there will be quite a few stinkers in the batch. Morgan doesn't suggest anything like this though, so don't go looking for caustic reviews in The World Between Two Covers. She sticks to the positive aspects and to the larger issues that they suggest.
I've been enjoying this recent boom of books about reading. The World Between Two Covers is most like the The Shelf by Phyllis Rose, but also fits in the same category as My Life in Middlemarch, How to Be a Heroine, and The Year of Reading Dangerously. This is Morgan's first book and I'm looking forward to more from her.
I was surprised that the book was not very much about the individual books she read, but that was fine with me, since I was more interested in the logistics (How did she find get books from North Korea? How did she decide what constitutes a country? What was the quality of the translation into English?) If you want to know about the books as she read them, they're still on her blog. But the book cover and marketing led me to believe that this would be more about the books themselves, so I'm not surprised that some readers are disappointed.
It's a monumental undertaking to try to cram into a single year. Just reading the books would have taken longer than that, I would have thought, and the time it took to find possible candidates, track them down and acquire them was another full time job. Add to that the regular blog posts and responses to interested followers, and it's quite an impressive accomplishment.
Morgan is a thinking reader and she examines such topics as censorship, the influence of English on the rest of the world, the internet's effect on focused reading, the nature of translation and the responsibilities of translators. She also talks about libraries, bookshops, her bookshelves, and reading on the subway.
She even talks about the books themselves from time to time, but I suspect that out of any collection of two hundred books, only about a quarter to a third of them will be worthwhile and that there will be quite a few stinkers in the batch. Morgan doesn't suggest anything like this though, so don't go looking for caustic reviews in The World Between Two Covers. She sticks to the positive aspects and to the larger issues that they suggest.
I've been enjoying this recent boom of books about reading. The World Between Two Covers is most like the The Shelf by Phyllis Rose, but also fits in the same category as My Life in Middlemarch, How to Be a Heroine, and The Year of Reading Dangerously. This is Morgan's first book and I'm looking forward to more from her.
January 15, 2018
I must confess it took me a while to get into this book and appreciate its premise. I mistakenly thought Ann Morgan was going to be directly commenting on or reviewing the books she had read in her international challenge . This she has done but on her blog page. Here she reflects more on the process and the politico-sociological challenges raised and challenges her readers to move away from white Eurocentric or America- centric viewpoints and seek out authentic world voices. Morgan has been on an amazing journey and doubtless enabled some unknown authors to find new readership that can only be good for them and their country. A handful of the books she encountered she found to be disturbing because of the extreme prejudice they promoted but overall it seems like most voices were inspirational.
The book certainly inspired me to broaden my reading. I consider myself to read pretty widely and certainly have a number of favourite international authors but Ann's achievement is pretty impressive. Of the 160 odd books Morgan listed at the end I was pleased to find I had actually already read 4, or 5 if I count vol 1 of the Arabian Nights!
“Travel broadens the mind “ they say. I am mostly an armchair traveller but Morgan's study also touches on research that is able to offer some sort of proof that reading itself, so long as one takes in a varied diet, is one of the most effective ways to literally broaden the mind and break down prejudice.
The book certainly inspired me to broaden my reading. I consider myself to read pretty widely and certainly have a number of favourite international authors but Ann's achievement is pretty impressive. Of the 160 odd books Morgan listed at the end I was pleased to find I had actually already read 4, or 5 if I count vol 1 of the Arabian Nights!
“Travel broadens the mind “ they say. I am mostly an armchair traveller but Morgan's study also touches on research that is able to offer some sort of proof that reading itself, so long as one takes in a varied diet, is one of the most effective ways to literally broaden the mind and break down prejudice.
April 27, 2020
This book is both a marvelous, ambitious endeavor and a disappointing conceit. I've been hunting for an idea exactly like hers, and had I thought of it first, would have approached it very differently. Her method of telling the story is very informative, but very droll, academic, and dry. I would have positioned it with more joy, more of an exploration, more diving into each book and extrapolating the lessons and curiousities and cultural differences. Her way was the least exciting way to explore such a great idea. I venture to say my way would have been the most. It's about the joy of reading, not the rigor. This was too much rigor, not enough joy.
February 4, 2018
This book was not at all what I expected, and I lost count on how many times I asked “what does this have to do with your journey reading a book from every country????” Sadly, I had many problems with this book and I felt a bit cheated. I will try to explain some of my problems with the book, but I’ll most likely forget something, or get too upset to continue developing my point.
I’ll start with some positive points: It was nice to publish the list of all the books read during the year; Although almost nothing had to do with her quest to read around the world, at least the text was well researched, and; Some aspects were indeed interesting, even though it was not what I read the book for.
But let’s talk about my main problems with the book.
1. The project design. It became apparent throughout the book that maybe reading books from every country in the world in one year was not doable. Sure, she did it, but what did she actually accomplish doing it? If she had any time to reflect on her decisions with the book and the nations she choose it did not come across AT ALL. How can you begin a project like this and believe you can do it completely without involving politics – using the UN as a reference to recognized countries? And not including Palestine and almost not doing it because well the countries have already been decided and then switching it with Kosovo because that is less of an independent nation than Palestine if you think about it…? Instead just extend the project and read both! Or even pause and ask yourself what other regions to include. But seriously, that it took until someone mention Palestine for her to realized this is political? It’s almost unavoidable and it’s thoughts like this that make countries and people in power to think their decisions and actions can be politically neutral but everyone else is political and therefore not neutral and therefore bad.
2. The time limit of the project. If you realize you are a literal xenophobe, then maybe it’s not ideal to as quickly as possible trying to get proof that you are not and instead many re-design your long-term reading habits. There was no mention on how this will change the way she reads in the future; will she continue finding books from other countries or go back to British and American white authors? That too, where’s the analysis on marginalized authors within your country? Will she start reading them? Plus, this is a complex task because it is subject to a lot of interpretation, why not take your time instead of rushing through it?
3. For a novel trying to be inclusive, it felt really exclusive and ignorant. The constant use of “we” that sometimes meant “the west”, “Europe”, and “Britain” but never being clear when she meant what. By using we, she also seemed to have no analysis of the differences within “the west”, “Europe” and “Britain”, those not white, those struggling with English, those not as “educated” or with less access to literature or the internet. Please just stop. Say what you mean, “I” or “privileged white, English speaking middle class women with a higher education”. The not so diverse publishing industry is structural and needs to be discussed, but I couldn’t find a single quote by those who actually fight to change it! Take for instance #WeNeedDiverseBooks who try to get more diverse voices published and in to the actual industry. There was also a lack of gender analysis (that includes more than two genders of course!).
4. Choosing examples of homomisia when talking about culture shocks. In case you didn’t know, people who hate LGBTQIA+ people exist EVERYWHERE, yes, even in “the west”. And for someone reacting so strongly towards authors being intolerant, she sure used a lot of “he or she” like there are only two genders. See, everyone has a long way to go… It’s okay to talk about how hatred of LGBTQIA+ is portrayed across the globe but don’t pat yourself and your country on the back just yet…
5. Trying to excuse British imperialism with “Portugal was worse” and talking about how Germans deal with the aftermath of WWII and how difficult it is to be an offspring of a Nazi but never mentioning the victims living in the aftermath (Jewish, Romani, LGBTQIA+, Disabled people etc.)? And instead of listening to the sentence that all Brits are racist she goes off on the classical “I can’t possibly be racist”. I was almost waiting for an “But I have a black friend”. Oh, and how classist, egocentric, and ignorant is this: “At any rate, Suwen couldn’t seriously mean ‘all’ Brits were racist. Not the cultured ones, surely? Not people who read widely enough to access Lim’s book in the first place. Not… me.” P. 219.
6. Translation. First, comparing book translators to war translators gave such a poor taste in my mouth. I was so close to giving up the book here. And I get it, it is such a scary thing to read a translated book not knowing if it is true to the original (actually I don’t really care myself, I get a story no matter what…). And if you don’t know and really need to know, here’s an idea, google it! There will most likely be a discussion somewhere about the translation. Plus, there are more people than the translator who knows both languages. Accessibility was never once mentioned when it comes to translation.
7. Finally, surveying the road ahead, sorry but if there was any chance for the book to redeem itself the last chapter totally blew it. Talking about the internet as this thing storing information? HOW IS THIS RELEVANT?????? And using the quote that if you’d tell someone from the 50s they’d be amazed that we have a device with the world’s information in our hand and we use it to pick fights and watch cat videos. I’ve literally just read an entire book praising the online people who made her project reading the world possible, and she goes with THAT?? Internet is made for so many accessible things! Such a weak ending.
Yeah so the more I think about it, I’m not so much disappointed as angry. I put my own goal on reading diversely in my own community, from English-speaking power countries, all UN-recognized nations across the world, countries that aren’t recognized, colonies etc. (not over a year though, over a lifetime!) to read a book by someone else doing the same and this is what I get?
I’ll start with some positive points: It was nice to publish the list of all the books read during the year; Although almost nothing had to do with her quest to read around the world, at least the text was well researched, and; Some aspects were indeed interesting, even though it was not what I read the book for.
But let’s talk about my main problems with the book.
1. The project design. It became apparent throughout the book that maybe reading books from every country in the world in one year was not doable. Sure, she did it, but what did she actually accomplish doing it? If she had any time to reflect on her decisions with the book and the nations she choose it did not come across AT ALL. How can you begin a project like this and believe you can do it completely without involving politics – using the UN as a reference to recognized countries? And not including Palestine and almost not doing it because well the countries have already been decided and then switching it with Kosovo because that is less of an independent nation than Palestine if you think about it…? Instead just extend the project and read both! Or even pause and ask yourself what other regions to include. But seriously, that it took until someone mention Palestine for her to realized this is political? It’s almost unavoidable and it’s thoughts like this that make countries and people in power to think their decisions and actions can be politically neutral but everyone else is political and therefore not neutral and therefore bad.
2. The time limit of the project. If you realize you are a literal xenophobe, then maybe it’s not ideal to as quickly as possible trying to get proof that you are not and instead many re-design your long-term reading habits. There was no mention on how this will change the way she reads in the future; will she continue finding books from other countries or go back to British and American white authors? That too, where’s the analysis on marginalized authors within your country? Will she start reading them? Plus, this is a complex task because it is subject to a lot of interpretation, why not take your time instead of rushing through it?
3. For a novel trying to be inclusive, it felt really exclusive and ignorant. The constant use of “we” that sometimes meant “the west”, “Europe”, and “Britain” but never being clear when she meant what. By using we, she also seemed to have no analysis of the differences within “the west”, “Europe” and “Britain”, those not white, those struggling with English, those not as “educated” or with less access to literature or the internet. Please just stop. Say what you mean, “I” or “privileged white, English speaking middle class women with a higher education”. The not so diverse publishing industry is structural and needs to be discussed, but I couldn’t find a single quote by those who actually fight to change it! Take for instance #WeNeedDiverseBooks who try to get more diverse voices published and in to the actual industry. There was also a lack of gender analysis (that includes more than two genders of course!).
4. Choosing examples of homomisia when talking about culture shocks. In case you didn’t know, people who hate LGBTQIA+ people exist EVERYWHERE, yes, even in “the west”. And for someone reacting so strongly towards authors being intolerant, she sure used a lot of “he or she” like there are only two genders. See, everyone has a long way to go… It’s okay to talk about how hatred of LGBTQIA+ is portrayed across the globe but don’t pat yourself and your country on the back just yet…
5. Trying to excuse British imperialism with “Portugal was worse” and talking about how Germans deal with the aftermath of WWII and how difficult it is to be an offspring of a Nazi but never mentioning the victims living in the aftermath (Jewish, Romani, LGBTQIA+, Disabled people etc.)? And instead of listening to the sentence that all Brits are racist she goes off on the classical “I can’t possibly be racist”. I was almost waiting for an “But I have a black friend”. Oh, and how classist, egocentric, and ignorant is this: “At any rate, Suwen couldn’t seriously mean ‘all’ Brits were racist. Not the cultured ones, surely? Not people who read widely enough to access Lim’s book in the first place. Not… me.” P. 219.
6. Translation. First, comparing book translators to war translators gave such a poor taste in my mouth. I was so close to giving up the book here. And I get it, it is such a scary thing to read a translated book not knowing if it is true to the original (actually I don’t really care myself, I get a story no matter what…). And if you don’t know and really need to know, here’s an idea, google it! There will most likely be a discussion somewhere about the translation. Plus, there are more people than the translator who knows both languages. Accessibility was never once mentioned when it comes to translation.
7. Finally, surveying the road ahead, sorry but if there was any chance for the book to redeem itself the last chapter totally blew it. Talking about the internet as this thing storing information? HOW IS THIS RELEVANT?????? And using the quote that if you’d tell someone from the 50s they’d be amazed that we have a device with the world’s information in our hand and we use it to pick fights and watch cat videos. I’ve literally just read an entire book praising the online people who made her project reading the world possible, and she goes with THAT?? Internet is made for so many accessible things! Such a weak ending.
Yeah so the more I think about it, I’m not so much disappointed as angry. I put my own goal on reading diversely in my own community, from English-speaking power countries, all UN-recognized nations across the world, countries that aren’t recognized, colonies etc. (not over a year though, over a lifetime!) to read a book by someone else doing the same and this is what I get?
May 31, 2015
Where are the books the author read? Yet another misleading book jacket led me astray. As an attempt to read more diversely (by authors of color, non-US/European, by underrepresented groups that I just typically don't read), I thought this might be a good book to give me ideas or inspiration for books to read. Instead it's really a series of essays in the author's treatise about the IDEA of reading books from around the world, but precious little about the BOOKS themselves.
There were mentions of a few interesting adventures by (I assume) authors or characters the author read. But instead we read long boring treatises about getting out of our comfort zones and how literature can be highly influential. And while some of the stories are really interesting (George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' was apparently rejected by US publishers because they didn't pick up the book was not really about animals), it seems the author really isn't interested in talking about the books. Or assumes the reader already read what she read and would know what she's talking about.
For example, she discusses Khaled Hosseini's 'The Kite Runner' and life under the Taliban. There is the briefest of discussion of a major plot point, but then the author brushes it off as saying there's nothing that would make a reader "nervous" about it and moves on. Maybe I'm different because I found the book very poignant (and that plot point painful to the point where I'm not sure I want to read Hosseini's other works because I'm wary of encountering similar themes, but that's on me). Ironically, despite the author's whole point to open up discussion and to broaden her horizons, she merely dismisses what KH wrote about.
The writing style was also very tedious. As mentioned, there were some fantastic and insightful sections. But she tends to be very long-winded at some points, while jumping around all over the place in others. As a more academic examination of literature and what it can do, this isn't bad, although the style was tough to read through. As a book about books, though, this was thoroughly disappointing.
There were mentions of a few interesting adventures by (I assume) authors or characters the author read. But instead we read long boring treatises about getting out of our comfort zones and how literature can be highly influential. And while some of the stories are really interesting (George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' was apparently rejected by US publishers because they didn't pick up the book was not really about animals), it seems the author really isn't interested in talking about the books. Or assumes the reader already read what she read and would know what she's talking about.
For example, she discusses Khaled Hosseini's 'The Kite Runner' and life under the Taliban. There is the briefest of discussion of a major plot point, but then the author brushes it off as saying there's nothing that would make a reader "nervous" about it and moves on. Maybe I'm different because I found the book very poignant (and that plot point painful to the point where I'm not sure I want to read Hosseini's other works because I'm wary of encountering similar themes, but that's on me). Ironically, despite the author's whole point to open up discussion and to broaden her horizons, she merely dismisses what KH wrote about.
The writing style was also very tedious. As mentioned, there were some fantastic and insightful sections. But she tends to be very long-winded at some points, while jumping around all over the place in others. As a more academic examination of literature and what it can do, this isn't bad, although the style was tough to read through. As a book about books, though, this was thoroughly disappointing.
November 24, 2015
Frequently when bloggers make the leap to book publishing, the result is a pretty paper repackaging of their digital content, so I expected Morgan’s The World Between Two Covers to be a simple recap of her year-long project of reading books from around the world – a breezy literary travelogue, if you will. Instead, while the books she read do make cameo appearances throughout the text as well as being listed in an appendix, Morgan offers us something a great deal more interesting than simple regurgitation, telling us the story around the stories and the surprising logistical (how does one get books from North Korea?) and ethical (what exactly constitutes a country, anyway?) roadblocks she encountered on her journey.
It’s a fascinating trip, full of WTF moments (HOW low is the percentage of foreign books translated into English?) and authorial insights, including an extended section in harmony with Adichie’s argument about the dangers of a country or a people being known by a single story. Particularly, as Morgan points out, when that story may have been chosen for translation because it has just the “right amount of foreignness” (read: slight exoticism) to make it in the global market, rather than because it’s truly representative. It’s a surprisingly, delightfully academic look at reading and publishing, with fun discursive dips into the multiplicity of reasons people read - Sherlock Holmes stories became wildly popular in China in the late nineteenth century due to their perceived educational value – and the challenges of translation, which go back at least to the 4th century CE, when St. Jerome sharply replied to criticisms of his translations of the Pope’s letters by arguing that translation is meant to be not word for word but sense for sense.
The World Between Two Covers isn’t the journey I was expecting when I picked it up, but the beauty of travel is in the surprises it can hold; Morgan’s thoughtful and beautifully written consideration of our responsibility as readers is one of the best I’ve had.
It’s a fascinating trip, full of WTF moments (HOW low is the percentage of foreign books translated into English?) and authorial insights, including an extended section in harmony with Adichie’s argument about the dangers of a country or a people being known by a single story. Particularly, as Morgan points out, when that story may have been chosen for translation because it has just the “right amount of foreignness” (read: slight exoticism) to make it in the global market, rather than because it’s truly representative. It’s a surprisingly, delightfully academic look at reading and publishing, with fun discursive dips into the multiplicity of reasons people read - Sherlock Holmes stories became wildly popular in China in the late nineteenth century due to their perceived educational value – and the challenges of translation, which go back at least to the 4th century CE, when St. Jerome sharply replied to criticisms of his translations of the Pope’s letters by arguing that translation is meant to be not word for word but sense for sense.
The World Between Two Covers isn’t the journey I was expecting when I picked it up, but the beauty of travel is in the surprises it can hold; Morgan’s thoughtful and beautifully written consideration of our responsibility as readers is one of the best I’ve had.
February 19, 2015
Y'all are going to get really tired of me talking about this book between now and May, when it comes out in the US.
A very well-written examination of why the Anglophone (specifically UK, and US by extension) reading population and publishing arm reads little world literature, particularly in translation, and the roadblocks one encounters when trying to find and read literature (and, by extension, purchase legally) by authors from, say, Burkina Faso or Nepal or Kuwait or Monaco or Lichtenstein. A huge list of books to read can be derived from Ann's work both in the actual 197 books she read in 2012 and the books she references in mulling over her experience.
Recommendation: buy this sucker when it's available in May and read the heck out of it, pen in hand (or buy and read it now if you're in the UK where it's been out since January).
Full disclosure: I read Ann's blog and loved it so when I saw that Norton's Liveright imprint was going to put out the US edition of A Year of Reading the World I hot-footed (hot-typed?) my way to their Twitter account to beg a galley. Which they merrily sent out to me because galleys had just become available. So many thanks to Liveright for the galley
A very well-written examination of why the Anglophone (specifically UK, and US by extension) reading population and publishing arm reads little world literature, particularly in translation, and the roadblocks one encounters when trying to find and read literature (and, by extension, purchase legally) by authors from, say, Burkina Faso or Nepal or Kuwait or Monaco or Lichtenstein. A huge list of books to read can be derived from Ann's work both in the actual 197 books she read in 2012 and the books she references in mulling over her experience.
Recommendation: buy this sucker when it's available in May and read the heck out of it, pen in hand (or buy and read it now if you're in the UK where it's been out since January).
Full disclosure: I read Ann's blog and loved it so when I saw that Norton's Liveright imprint was going to put out the US edition of A Year of Reading the World I hot-footed (hot-typed?) my way to their Twitter account to beg a galley. Which they merrily sent out to me because galleys had just become available. So many thanks to Liveright for the galley
December 28, 2018
As other reviewers have noted, Morgan's book is less about her thoughts on texts from around the world (which I presume she treats on her blog) and more about her approach to amassing and reading them. I especially appreciated chapter 8 about the effects of reading literature on one's worldview and chapter 11 on translation. Other times I perceived the same experience that Morgan describes in being unable identify with the morals of certain writers, as I looked on from a distance at some of her premises about ideas such as oppression. The recommendations sprinkled throughout have swelled my to-read shelf substantially and I look forward to attempting some of the more culturally challenging ones. Many have quite low ratings on Goodreads and it leaves me wondering which perspective I best align with; are the Goodreads reviewers simply not reading with the right lens and an eye toward broadening their horizons, or is Morgan extremely experimental and avant-garde? Overall she has left me with a firmer conviction to read more widely and with an eye to my own personal engagement with literature.
April 22, 2017
4.5 stars. I've been working on a books of the world project myself (albeit at an excruciatingly slow pace) and really enjoyed this. I think the low ratings come from readers who expected a rundown of the books she read - which is already available on her blog and would just be repetitive. Instead, she ties the books she read together through chapters that explore, among other things, biases in translation, the challenge of finding books in countries with oral traditions, and why reading novels makes people more empathetic. The academic style occasionally reads a bit awkwardly, like a college thesis, but the content is important. And - from her blog - just found out that MADAGASCAR WILL HAVE ITS FIRST-EVER ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF A NOVEL THIS YEAR! Awesome. I know what I'll be reading in October.
Read
May 15, 2019I loved this project when I first heard about it: Ann Morgan set out to read a book from every country in the world within one year. Her blog chronicles lessons from these books and I really enjoyed the premise and process of the project. The book itself is less about those books that she read and more about the process of such a project and the various considerations around it. (Fellow) dorky book lovers will enjoy this.
April 12, 2023
I loved this!! Don’t pick it up if you’re looking for reviews of these books from every country of the world - the author has published her reviews of all the books on her blog, and you can go and read them there for free. This book is about the process of her project, and it’s brilliant. The research, the sourcing of material, the thinking and decision making processes, the reflexive self-questioning. I found it fascinating to consider just what we might mean by a country to start with, and what we mean by ‘international’, when it refers to literature, all the insidious biases with which we limit ourselves and others. So many questions about what we consider literature, how it ever gets published, how it gets turned into English, and what happens to it on its journey to the dominant market. So much history that makes it hard to trust where our own thoughts come from. So many different voices carrying different perspectives. So many limits on our freedom of expression, obvious and subtle.
I was particularly moved by the chapter about culture shock upon reading world literature. It triggered a lot of internal conversation for me. Having lived in three countries and now unsure that I really properly belong in any of them, the book helped me see a little more clearly why I often feel I have mislaid my voice. Amid the pressure to identify as one thing or another, to ‘know’ oneself, to ‘speak for’ or ‘not speak for’, dis-location is unsettling at any time, and rather confusing if you feel the urge to write, yet question your right to contribute to the discourse around you.
The book has a great bibliography, as you can imagine. I have just spent several happy hours immersed in it. 😁
I was particularly moved by the chapter about culture shock upon reading world literature. It triggered a lot of internal conversation for me. Having lived in three countries and now unsure that I really properly belong in any of them, the book helped me see a little more clearly why I often feel I have mislaid my voice. Amid the pressure to identify as one thing or another, to ‘know’ oneself, to ‘speak for’ or ‘not speak for’, dis-location is unsettling at any time, and rather confusing if you feel the urge to write, yet question your right to contribute to the discourse around you.
The book has a great bibliography, as you can imagine. I have just spent several happy hours immersed in it. 😁
April 26, 2019
I mostly enjoyed the book - and I was really impressed with the scope of the project - but I was a bit disappointed in the book overall. I understand why the background information is there, but I was really hoping that she would write more about the books themselves. It's possible/probable that she covers that in her blog, but still...
May 5, 2025
This is rather academic and I did enjoy reading about the premise and learnt some things about publishing and translation. I didn’t finish it as I was hoping for a fiction book and got a socio political overview of world writing and the publishing industry.
May 25, 2017
When I first picked up this book I was excited about the concept of reading texts from all across the world. I could already envision myself with sails cast traveling figuratively to unknown lands. In my mind’s eye I saw clearly the vast array of colors that enveloped the people; could almost taste the exotic food as the aroma of culinary delights wafted into my nose. From looking at the cover, I expected Ann Morgan, “Blogger Extraordinaire”, to include us on her literary adventures. I expected this book to delve into the “The 196 ( . . . AND Kurdistan)” with delightful anecdotes of far-away lands. I supposed it might be a foray into ethnic studies reminiscent of my cultural anthropology classes in college. Ah but alas – One should never judge a book by its cover. What a found between these two covers (pun intended) was a thorough research endeavor in which Morgan painstakingly sought out, found, and was gifted texts from around the world. Indeed some texts had not yet been translated into English and others not even published.
In this global economy that we live in where we can Skype with someone clear across the other side of the world, one might think that Ann Morgan’s endeavor were a simple feat. Over the course of 12 chapters she outlines why we are not as globally minded as we might think we are and the obstacles that stand in the way of authors and readers alike trying to connect across cultures. From the Eurocentrism evident not only in our choice of literary canons, but also in our construction of maps that color how we perceive the world -- to the “translation bottleneck” that determines which books even have a chance of reaching the Anglophone reader, Morgan’s thorough analysis is both eye opening and soul searching.
In this global economy that we live in where we can Skype with someone clear across the other side of the world, one might think that Ann Morgan’s endeavor were a simple feat. Over the course of 12 chapters she outlines why we are not as globally minded as we might think we are and the obstacles that stand in the way of authors and readers alike trying to connect across cultures. From the Eurocentrism evident not only in our choice of literary canons, but also in our construction of maps that color how we perceive the world -- to the “translation bottleneck” that determines which books even have a chance of reaching the Anglophone reader, Morgan’s thorough analysis is both eye opening and soul searching.
September 20, 2018
I was disappointed. I was really interested in information about the books she read and how she acquired them. While spatterings of that are included, the best way I can describe the book is a woman who wanted to write a self indulgent textbook about the concept of reading. Some chapters are more interesting than others, but it mostly rolls on and on about what it is like to read in the modern era with large swaths of talking about publishing, editing, and translating and how it effects reading in general. It wasn't what I was hoping for at all. I should have read the blog instead which would have been free, however, now that I got tricked into getting excited about and reading this book, I probably won't. I feel I was lured in and tricked into reading it with promises of Bibliophile sweetmeats that were never delivered upon.
The book is fine... I guess... just don't go in expecting to hear a lot about the books she read.
The book is fine... I guess... just don't go in expecting to hear a lot about the books she read.
June 15, 2015
Morgan could have recapped her blog or expanded her comments on the year of reading but she has done a great deal of thinking and research to write this insightful and unique book. She explores bigger issues of nationality, identity, translation, globalization and others through the lens of her reading experience. It would have been so easy for her to tick through her list and write a book that patted herself on the back for her effort but that would have been somewhat circular and done no more than inspire others to do more list checking. She does so much more here. This is one of the few books I remember about the experience of reading and what drives us to read. I was impressed by how much work she put into writing and researching this book; she has done so much more than read some books.
August 5, 2016
I tried so hard with this book over a period of three months. I really wanted to love this book. I love the concept of this book and Ann's journey. I've read parts of her blog and watched her TED Talk.
But this book just did not work. It was so, so very boring. It would have really benefit from an editor chopping much of it out, and just leaving the substance. The book is academic and rambling. The author tends to make a point about something - a really great point - in the first few pages of a chapter and then goes on and on and on for 20 more pages. Many of the examples seem disjointed and only loosely related to the them of the chapter.
It's disappointing, but this book really misses the park. I made it about 175 page before I started skimming, and even then I had to stop before I finished. I'll stick to Ann's book list and blog.
But this book just did not work. It was so, so very boring. It would have really benefit from an editor chopping much of it out, and just leaving the substance. The book is academic and rambling. The author tends to make a point about something - a really great point - in the first few pages of a chapter and then goes on and on and on for 20 more pages. Many of the examples seem disjointed and only loosely related to the them of the chapter.
It's disappointing, but this book really misses the park. I made it about 175 page before I started skimming, and even then I had to stop before I finished. I'll stick to Ann's book list and blog.
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