Around the World in 80 Books discussion

A1) India (Tamil Nadu): One Part Woman
A2) Cyprus: The Island of Missing Trees
A3) Palestine: The Bethlehem Murders
A4) Guadeloupe: A Meditation on Murder
A5) Poland: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Going to start with the bottom lefthand corner (A5) with Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk and translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones which was nominated for the 2020 fiction award

So my trip to Poland is over, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead was entertaining, engaging and thought provoking. There's a stage version touring the UK and Belgium at the moment, may try and catch a performance in Bristol. The translation was superb.

Now heading up the a column to the island of Cyprus

A2) Set on an island The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak set on Cyprus and in London.

Another excellent read, a fig tree is one of the important characters in this novel which explores the legacy of the Cyprus troubles of 1974 on a mixed Turkish/Greek family.

Now about to travel down to A3) a book with a characters who shares your profession. This will take me to Palestine in the company of teacher Omar Yussuf in The Bethlehem Murders

A3) A book that has a character that shares your profession The Bethlehem Murders

Matt Rees chooses a Palestinian teacher of history in a refugee camp in Bethlehem as his protagonist in this dark tale of murder and corruption.

A1) Translated from an Indian regional language: One Part Woman

Written in Tamil by Perumal Murugan and translated into English by Aniruddhan Vasudevan. This focuses on how society can oppress those who aren't seen to conform to expectations, full of suspense and with an ending that had his readers demanding to know what happened next.

The tropical setting has to wait so although I've nearly got a line I'm heading to E4 and a small northern Welsh village with One Moonlit Night by Caradog Prichard set in Wales during and just after the first world war. This has been translated from the Welsh by Phillip Mitchell.

One Moonlit Night was a good read with an unexpected ending, if you like Dylan Thomas then read this.

A4) Tropical setting A Meditation on Murder by Robert Thorogood set on the fictional Caribbean Island of St Marie and part of the "Death in Paradise" series. Real escapism in the tradition of Agatha Christie. Although I've watched the TV series I've not read any of the screen writer's novels before. So I've now got a line! Going with Guadeloupe as the setting as that's where the TV series is filmed.

C1) Set in a Nordic country The Sealwoman's Gift

Sally Magnusson's debut novel which begins on Heimaey, one of the Westman Islands off the coast of Iceland in 1627. The protagonist is captured by pirates and taken to Algiers returning 10 years later after the payment of a ransom. Gripping reading. I shall read the Laxdaela Saga for E3 having read this.

D4) Polar setting The Last Migration

I didn't get on with this novel, I was intrigued by the idea of following a flock of arctic terns from the Arctic to the Antarctic but found the jumping around in time confusing. However it fits the prompt twice over!

D2) Adjacent countries Inés del alma mía also available in English translation as Inés of My Soul

This novel by Isabel Allende is narrated in the voice of Inés Suárez, who was the mistress of the conquistador Pedro de Valdivia and is set in Peru and Chile in the 16th century, she writes/narrates her memoirs which include bloody descriptions of atrocities and battles.

D3) Planes, trains and automobiles Around the World in 80 Trains: A 45,000-Mile Adventure

Enjoyable travelogue by Monisha Rajesh taking you on a global journey by train. My favourite journeys were across Canada and the USA and surprisingly an organised train trip around North Korea.

Great choice for the square! Just finished the book -- I loved reading about the different journeys.

B4) South American Author The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

Although set in Ecuador the author Luis Sepúlveda was from Chile, he died of Covid in Spain in 2020. The love story here is just as much to the rain forest and Shuar people as it is to reading novels.

Mome_Rath wrote: "Great choice for the square! Just finished the book -- I loved reading about the different journeys."

And me, she has already written a book about travelling by train around India.

C5) ) LBGTQ character The Long Call

The first book in a new series set in North Devon. (I live in South Devon but know many of the places where this is set) by Ann Cleeves. The lead police office in this is gay and married to the manager of a local community centre which is the centre of his investigation. My first time reading this author but am now eager to read the next book.

D5) Fewer than 1,000 Goodreads ratings Artemisia

Anna Banti's novel based on life of seventeenth-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi translated from the Italian by Shirley D'Ardia Caracciolo which currently has 710 ratings.

C4) Nonfiction history España: A Brief History of Spain

Giles Tremlett's 2022 short look at the history of Spain up to last year. An overview as you might expect from the title (approx 270 pages) and engaging.

B5) BIPOC author Hungry Ghosts

Unsettling and violent story by Kevin Jared Hosein set in 10940's Trinidad but beautiful prose.

Joining in late this year, I'll start by adding books I've already read this year that fit the prompts and then get going to fill in the gaps.

✔A1) Afro-futurism - Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (21st Sept)
✔A2) Immigrant Experience - We Are All Birds of Uganda by Hafsa Zayyan looking at the lives and experiences in the UK different generations of Asians exiled from Uganda (21st Jan)
✔A3) Set in Asia - Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai Set in Vietnam(13th April)
✔A4) Set During a War - The Nine: The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany by Gwen Strauss (11th Jan)
✔A5) Translated from Arabic They Fell Like Stars from the Sky & Other Stories set in the Palestinian occupied territories by Sheikha Helawy translated by Nancy Roberts (20th May)

✔B1) Country Not Read in 2023 The Places in Between by Rory Stewart Afghanistan (16th July)
✔B2) Romance - The Chocolate Tin by Fiona McIntosh
✔B3) Women in Translation - Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro set in Argentina and translated from the Spanish by Frances Riddle (23rd Jan)
✔B4) Set in Scandinavia - The Cabin by Jørn Lier Horst set in Norway and translated from the Norwegian by Anne Bruce (16th Feb)
✔B5) Third Book in a Series The Mist by Ragnar Jónasson

✔C1) Latin American Author - One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (13th July)
✔C2) Published in the 1920s - To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf published in 1927 (22nd August)
✔C3) Set During Winter - Raven Black by Ann Cleeves set in a dark, shetland winter but I read it in the summer! (15th June)
✔C4) LGBTQ Main Character - The Heron's Cry by Ann Cleeves Detective Matthew Venn, the protagonist (20th Jan)
✔C5) Set on an Island - The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier (22nd Nov)

✔D1) Greater than 500 pages - Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver- 546 pages (21st March)
✔D2) Poetry 50 Ways to Score a Goal and Other Football Poems by Brian Bilston
✔D3) Animal on Cover - How to Raise an Elephant by Alexander McCall Smith of course the animal is an elephant! (6th April)
D4) Set in Oceania -
D5) NYRB Classics -

✔E1) Orange Cover - Death of an Outsider by M.C. Beaton (22nd Sept)
✔E2) Author from a Country Starting with a B - The Mahé Circle by Belgian author Georges Simenon (23rd Sept)
✔E3) Memoir or Biography of a World Leader - Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West by Catherine Belton (14th Sept)
✔E4) Author of Color - Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor (17th Jan)
✔E5) Food Item in Title - Oranges in No Man's Land by Elizabeth Laird

E3) Memoir or biography of a world leader: Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West by Catherine Belton

Very detailed account of Putin's rise to power and the web of interests that keeps him there.

Have completed two more prompts, neither genre would normally be on my reading lists.
A1) Afro-futurism Binti by Nnedi Okorafor Well written but I'm not into sci-fi so won't be reading the rest of the trilogy.

B2) Romance The Chocolate Tin by Fiona McIntosh I'm afraid I found this clichéd, she actually used the word ravished! I enjoyed the part about chocolate and the influence of the Rowntree Family on the life of York.

E1) Orange cover - Death of an Outsider by M.C. Beaton but I can't find my orange audio edition on here. This would also work for third book in a series.

E2) Author from a country beginning with B - The Mahé Circle by Belgian author Georges Simenon A dark tale featuring an island off the Cote d'Azur.

B5) Third book in a series - The Mist by Ragnar Jónasson and translated from the Iclandic by Victoria Cribb

Hidden Iceland series: this engrossing series of 3 books takes us back in time, the first book starts at the end of detective Hulda Hermannsdottir's career and this one covers an event that overshadows the rest of her life.

C5) Set on an island - The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier

A novel set on the island of Murano in the Venetian lagoon that spans nearly 6 centuries

D2) Poetry - 50 Ways to Score a Goal and Other Football Poems by Brian Bilston, a witty and well observed series of poems about football, many are really well suited to reading aloud, I shared several with my husband who wants to share now with his 5-a-side football chums.

E5) Food item in the title Oranges in No Man's Land by Elizabeth Laird - set in Lebanon's civil war in the 1970s looking at the life of a child displaced by war, it's tragically still very relevant for that country today,