Around the World in 80 Books discussion

C2: Women in Translation (Changed from B1)

A Long Petal of the Sea
Setting: CHILE, Spain
Translated from: SPANISH
The main (fictional) character served as a medical auxiliary in the Spanish Civil War, then migrated to Chile under the sponsorship of the poet Pablo Neruda and played chess with Salvador Allende, both (real-life) celebrities playing a significant part in his story. The book could have been filed under at least five of the categories in the Magic Square.

Note: Where the setting and/or author covers more than one country, the one in capital letters is the one I am counting in my project of filling the bingo card with 25 different countries.

D2: Set in Scandinavia

The Morning Star
Setting: NORWAY
A new star appears in the sky, strange animals emerge, alone or in large groups, and some of the narrators see dead people walking. One of them writes a lengthy dissertation before describing his own experience of the latter. There were too many different voices narrating the chapters, and it was hard to trace what connection, if any, they had with one another. What will stay with me is Arne's psychotic wife whose conversation was limited to the three responses: "Are you sure about that?", "I don't know" and "Sorry".

E4: New York Review of Books Classic

Journey by Moonlight
Setting: HUNGARY, Italy
A Hungarian couple on honeymoon in Italy discover their incompatability. He travels from place to place, searching for resolution of a childhood experience involving the suicide of his friend. Eventually he returns to Hungary, to his father's business and life as a sensible adult. Published in Hungarian in 1937, the book was not translated into English until 1990, 45 years after the author's death,

A3: Latin American Author

The Alchemist
Author: BRAZILIAN
Setting: MOROCCO, Spain, Egypt
A simple retelling of an old story about a man traveling in search of treasure, and discovering that it was buried close to home. He follows his dream, and the universe puts omens in his way. The alchemist is just one of the wise people who guide him on his way, and the fact that he is an alchemist plays a very small part in the story. Moral: follow your dream.

E2: Third book in a series

The Sum of Things
Setting: SYRIA, Egypt, Palestine
The final part of Olivia Manning's The Levant Trilogy, itself a successor to The Balkan Trilogy. Guy Pringle is in Cairo, together with a few characters from previous books, having sent his wife Harriet to board a steamer for England. She, however, has changed her mind. tired of being taken for granted, and is on her way to Syria...

C3: Set in winter

One Winter's Night
Setting: ICELAND
After the stress of selling up her childhood home after her mother's death, Molly is looking forward to a peaceful family Christmas in Iceland with her sister and family. But it doesn't work out as she expected ... Wonderful description of the Aurora Borealis

E3: Set on an island

The Islanders
Setting: IRELAND
Unfolding of the terrible history of a small (fictitious) island in County Cork, once the home of a women's prison, when an Englishwoman, wrestling with her own tragedy, comes to visit.

C4: Animal on Cover

Penguins Stopped Play: Eleven Village Cricketers Take on the World
Setting: ANTARCTICA et al.
Not your average village team, but a multinational, mixed ability group who tour the world in order to play a match on every continent, and succeed in beating a national side, even if it was on a Tuesday.

E1: Translated from Arabic

Minor Detail
Setting: PALESTINE
Two stories. This first tells of the gang rape and murder of an Arab girl in 1949, from the point of view on the commanding officer of an Israeli battalion. In the second, a young Palestinian woman reads about the incident, is struck by a minor detail: (the date of the event, exactly 25 years before she was born) and tries to find out more about it. Unfortunately, as she herself admits, she is not good at handling boundaries.

E5: Food Item in Title

Peppermint Cookie Murder
Setting: NORTH POLE (and rural USA)
A fairy story of Cindy Claus, daughter of Santa and an elf, who wants to try living in the real world and takes over as village bakery. A lighthearted Chrismas story (although there is a murder), with cookie recipes as an appendix.

THIS COMPLETES COLUMN E.

B1: Immigrant Experience

Coconut: A Black girl fostered by a white family in the 1960s and her search for belonging and identity
Setting: NIGERIA /England
Born in London of Nigerian parents, the author experienced immigration both as a small child, when the family returned to Nigeria, and as an adult, when she and her husband and children move to England. She is not afraid to tell of the mistakes she made in different cultures, including within her own family.

B3: Published in the 1920s

Siddhartha
Setting: INDIA
Two friends join an ascetic cult and depart in pursuit of wisdom. They meet the Buddha, shortly after his enlightenment. One, Govinda, becomes a disciple. The other, Siddhartha, explains to the Buddha himself why he is choosing a diferent path, wanting to experience the world for himself rather than listen to another's words. This book is his story.

D1: Set during a war

Between Two Shores
Setting: CANADA, mid 18th century during the "French and Indian War"
After her mother's death, Catherine left the Mohawk village where she was born to live with her French father at his trading-post, where their business depends on fair and neutral dealing with English and French settlers as well as the Indian tribes. Here she falls in love with Samuel, a prisoner-of-war who was "redeemed" (bought to serve a fixed term as a slave) by her father. Samuel disappears, then comes back with a request: will she help him to carry a vital message to General Wolfe? Plenty of historical detail about the war and how it affected ordinary people.

D4: Set in Oceania

Her Buried Bones
Setting: AUSTRALIA
The first of a series about a young policewoman who seeks a posting in the outback, with a secret mission of her own: to find oit what happened to her mother and sister, who disappeared some years previously. But first, there is a more recent murder to solve.

D3: LGBTQ Main Character

Mr Loverman
Setting: ANTIGUA / England
Fifty yeas after leaving Antigua, Barry has a dilemma: whether or not to leave his wife and move in with his long-term lover and verbal sparring-partner Morris.

D5: Author of Color

The Burning Land
Setting: SOUTH AFRICA
A generation after the end of apartheid, dreams of a better future are wearing thin. Is the Land Collective a peaceful protest movement standing up against corruption, or a terrorist organization? Lindi returns to the land of her birth to investigate, after the murder of a rich man's son is followed by a wave of xenophobia.

This completes column D, though I may move the book to A5 having seen that it has an orange cover.

C1: Set in Asia

The Easy Life in Kamusari
Setting: JAPAN
A school-leaver is shipped off to a remote village to take part in a Green Work Experience scheme and learns about forestry and mountain rituals.

C5: Biography of a World Leader

Peter The Great: Autocrat And Reformer
Setting: RUSSIA &c
Peter the Great, who established Russia as a signficant power in the world and brought it into the 18th century, asked a trusted friend advisor to compare his reign with his father's, The friend praised him for "building a fleet, making treaties, and determining our relationship with foreign countries", and regarded his work in organizing the army as comparable with that of his father. Regarding the first of the tsar's main duties, "the administration of the country and the dispensation of justice", all he could say was "It is possible that when you do give some thought to this matter, you will do more than your father." The last chapter shows how Peter responded to this challenge.

This completes column C.

A1: Afrofuturism

The Instrument
Setting: "Sand Dune Community" somewhere in Africa
The people of the Sand Dune Community live in tunnels, under the strict control of The Instrument. Kiyanna, as a deviant, is controlled more strictly than most, but with the help of her wrestling partner and her childhood sweetheart (who, unknown to her, is an Instrumental), manages to penetrate and destroy The Instrument. Shades of 1984, but without the explanation.

A2: Country not read in 2023

The Stranger
Setting: ALGERIA
(Also published as The Outsider)
Mersault pled guilty to shooting an Arab; but, in the eyes of the court, his heinous offence was failure to cry at his mother's funeral.

A4: More than 500 pages

Cloud Cuckoo Land
Setting: TURKEY &c.
A story with multiple strands, all connected to a Greek manuscript, discovered by a litle girl at the fall of Constantinople in the fifteenth century; rediscovered in a museum in the twentyfirst; translated by an autodidact, and then adapted for performance by a group of fifth-grade children; and finally providing a lifeline to a girl held in solitary confinement on a spaceship.

This completes column A.

B4: Poetry

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Omar Khayyam Peter Avery John Heath-Stubbs (1984-03-06) Paperback
Setting: Persia, 12th century
A new translation (published by Penguin) of these four-line popular and irreverent poems attributed to a philosopher and mathematician, much as if a future generation would discover Betrand Russell through a book of limericks he had scribbled in his spare time. The introduction sets the scene in the religious and philosophical culture of his day, where Khayyam's scepticism, support of neo-Platonism, and frequent references to wine caused him to be regarded as a heretic or worse.

B5: Author from a country beginning with B

The Widow Couderc
Author's nationality: BELGIAN; Setting: FRANCE, Cher Valley
The widow befriends the stranger on the bus who helps her carry the shopping home, and offers him board and lodging in return for odd jobs around her farm. He has recently being discharged from prison after serving a sentence for causing death; but he cannot forget that the sentence should have been execution for murder. Meanwhile, the widow suspects that he is getting all too friendly with her niece ...

D5: Author of Color

City Psalms (Studies in Comparative Religion
Setting: ENGLAND
Raps by Benjamin Zephaniah, mostly on life in England today.

B2: Romance

Enemies to Lovers
Setting: an imaginary tropical island
"Enemies to Lovers" is one of the sub-genres of "Romance" listed at the Kindle Store. This book about competing journalists sent on a mission to a luxury spa was an unexpectedly pleasant read for the last cell on my Bingo Card.

BINGO!

Barbara wrote: "B4: Poetry

[book:Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Omar Khayyam Peter Avery John Heath-..."

Hi Barbara,

Thanks for your post; I am thrilled to see Peter Avery's book here. I personally knew him and spent wonderful hours over the year talking about Persian poetry and his love of Hafiz, in particular.

Kind regards,
Bahram