Nickelini's Read Around the World Challenge

create your own visited country map
Here is my map. I'm only including books that are 1) fiction, and 2) representative of the both the country and the writer. . . that is, for example, if an author from Sweden writes a book set in Andorra, I do not count the book for Sweden OR Andorra. This will reduce the amount of red on my map, but it's the only way I can get my head around this challenge.

Note: I only include books about a country if the author is either from the country or has at least lived there.

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I'm also following Irisheyz77's example, and reading the Canadian provinces. Of course I've read lots of books set in Canada, but I'm starting this record clean as of January 1, 2008. The list of actual books follows below.


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Here are the books that I've used to count as red on my map:

1. Canada: Eleanor Rigby, by Douglas Coupland
2. US: Digging to America, by Anne Tyler
3. Mexico: Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel
4. Czech Republic: The Trial, by Franz Kafka
5. Germany: The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink
6. Spain: Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
7. Norway: Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder
8. Ireland: Tara Road, by Maeve Binchy
9. UK: Atonement, by Ian McEwan
10. France: Candide, by Voltaire
11. Italy: The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
12. Russia: Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
13. New Zealand: The Collected Stories, by Katherine Mansfield
14. Australia: The Secret River, by Kate Grenville
15. China: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie
16. India: A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry
17. Sri Lanka: Mosquito, by Roma Tearne
18. Pakistan: Meatless Days, by Sara Suleri
19. Afghanistan: The Kite Runner,
20. Iran: Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi
21. Columbia: Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
22. Haiti: The Farming of Bones, by Edwidge Danticat
23. South Africa: Burger's Daughter, by Nadine Gordimer
24. Nigeria: Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Most of these I read in 2007. If I remember books that I read earlier from other countries, I'll add them. I'm sure I'm forgetting some.

Okay, I've broken one of my own rules already. Meatless Days is technically a memoir, and not fiction. But the writing style is definitely in a fictional style, and it is not a straightforward biography by any means, so I'm keeping it. I guess I could substitute it with Shame by Salman Rushdie if the guilt (or shame, ha ha ha) gets to be too much for me. :-)

By the way, if anyone is looking for a book for Pakistan, I don't recommend Meatless Days. I read it twice--the first time I disliked it. The second time I had to write a paper on it, and upon close reading, I discovered that I really hated the book. I want those hours back! Possibly the worst book I've read in years. That said, I know people who liked it a lot. Different strokes, I guess.

Thanks for posting your journey; I like to see where everyone else is "traveling" to. If you liked the Danticat book, her Breath, Eyes, Memory is phenomenal if you haven't read it yet. I love her writing style and the way she really evokes the sense of setting.

Breath, Eyes, Memory is on my TBR list for this journey! Can't wait to get to it...

Updating my map to add:

23. South Africa: Burger's Daughter, by Nadine Gordimer. I really disliked this book. Here is my review:

I realize that Burger’s Daughter is an Important Book, and that the author won a Nobel Prize for Literature. That doesn’t make me like this book, although it wasn’t all bad.
It is the story of one woman’s search for self-identity. Her challenge is that she grew up in the shadow of parents who were famous anti-apartheid activists in South Africa. Part of the story is told in first person narration, and partly by an omniscient narrator; this is one of the techniques that I think works quiet well (the narrator clarifies some of the stream of consciousness rambling of the first person narrator).
This is not a book to read quickly. The author writes in a cryptic style that often requires contemplation at the sentence-by-sentence level. Her weakness is definitely dialogue. In what seems like an attempt at realism, she throws out all conventions for representing speech (including quotation marks and the opaque “he said”). She mixes narration and dialogue in this “creative” style, and the result is confusion. At one point, there is a lengthy conversation between a group of people that results in pages and pages of gibberish. A motivated reader would be able to figure it all out, but frankly, for the most part, the book wasn’t interesting enough to put out the effort. There were pages scattered throughout that were interesting and I realized that I was enjoying the book and hadn’t been working at it, but those parts are few and too far between. There are also many beautiful examples of unique phrasing. It’s too bad Gordimer made a mess of the book with her style for representing dialogue. (*)

Reading the Canadian Provinces: my first entry for this challenge gives my map a big red blob in the centre--also known as Saskatchewan. The book was Peace Shall Destroy Many by Rudy Wiebe. Here's my review:

This book has been in my TBR pile for at least 15 years, and I finally got around to reading it. I hesitate to write a review because the book description on the main page is so thorough, but I'll try to add some of my own impressions here. The blurb on the back cover of my edition is also an excellent description: "Rudy Wiebe's celebrated first novel about religious intolerance, and the problems that can be caused by rigid adherence to traditions of non-violence . . ." It's interesting that this novel created such a hub-bub when it was first published. Rather than make statements, all it does is question "why do we behave this way?" I guess some found that question threatening. I expected this novel to be an apology of pacifism, so I was surprised that it wasn't at all. Instead it was a philosophical questioning of pacifism that left answers up to the reader. Other themes explored in the novel are traditionalism, isolationism and the immigrant experience. All those -isms sound very dry, but the novel tells a story of a group of unique characters who grapple with these issues as they go about their day to day lives. I think it helps to have some knowledge of Mennonite culture to properly appreciate this book. Overall, an interesting novel that makes you think. (****)

Nickelini - I have always found Gordimer a bit of a slog; several tries at starting because of her recognition.

I just read The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam and the title is misleading - although I now know how to spell "Voluptuous". It is a 'memoir' novel of childhood in Rhodesia before the change-over. I enjoyed it and thought she did a good job of showing the good and bad of Africa. You might like it if you haven't done a read for this country.

Karen--That title is just too good to pass up! Thanks for the suggestion--onto my reading list it goes.

> 7
I'm so pleased to see someone else's TBR pile dates back so many years!
On Gordimer, I read The Pickup earlier this year and enjoyed it (much more straightforward than the one you read, from your review) - but she uses the same device with the dialogue, and I agree, it was hard to tell sometimes whether it was dialogue or narrative.
I've just responded to your message about Sri Lanka on my own thread.

24. Kenya:West With the Night, by Beryl Markham

When I picked up this book, I hadn't considered it as one that would count for my global challenge. For one, I'm trying to stick strictly to fiction, and two, the author was born in England. But after reading it, I changed my mind. This is a fictionalized memoir, perhaps more for what she leaves out than what she includes. It's also written in a beautiful, literary style that reads like a novel and not an autobiography. Also, although the author was born in England, she moved to Kenya when she was four, spent the next 30 years there, and then returned to settle there in her old age. So, for the purposes of my global exploration, I think it works quite nicely. I'll write a review of the book under my 50 Book Challenge thread.

25. Dominica:Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys

Dominica is so tiny, the red doesn't really appear on the map unless you have eagle eyes. I will write about this book over at the Girly Books group.

Reading the Canadian Provinces

2. British Columbia: A Recipe for Bees, by Gail Anderson-Dargatz, and The Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast, by Bill Richardson.

Comments at:

http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=29181

Reading the Canadian Provinces

3. Prince Edward Island: Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Comments at post #81:

http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=29181

26. The Dominican Republic

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez.

I'll write about this one in the June group read on voluntary immigration.

Copying this idea from Christiguc, here is my map of Great Britain:


I've visited the counties in yellow.
Which counties have you visited?

made by marnanel
map reproduced from Ordnance Survey map data
by permission of the Ordnance Survey.
© Crown copyright 2001.

Great Britain, starting in 2008

1. Greater London: Bleak House
2. Essex: The Other Boleyn Girl
3. Yorkshire: Jane Eyre
4. Edinburgh: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
5. Dorset Sense and Sensibility
6. Leicestershire: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
7. Somerset: Persuasion
8. Norfolk: The Accidental

There are more, but I'll have to look them up because I don't remember.

Edited Aug '09: remembered a few more.

the Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, Peter Handke, Austria

Such an extremely odd book. Not sure how to describe it. Definitely not a fun, pleasant read, and in parts it was boring. That said, however, I'm glad I read it, and on some level I found it absolutely fascinating. It's about an ex-soccer goalie and former construction worker who wanders around Austria with little explanation or purpose. Early in the novel, he murders someone for no apparent reason. The thing that I found most fascinating about the novella was the narration: the narrator appears to be omniscient, but the voice really follows only the main character, and is very selective about what it says. In some parts it goes into extensive detail, and in others it is incredibly vague. The language is deceptively simple, perhaps matching the vocabulary with that of the uneducated goalie. The only time he is able to articulate himself effectively is when he talks about soccer. The ending is unusual, and going out on a limb here (and this isn't a spoiler), I think it tells the reader not to overthink things--which most readers have probably done if they've made it to the end. A very existential book. Recommended for its narrative technique, but not for the story.

I didn't contribute to this thread as much as I expected to, but it's not because of a lack of global reading. For some reason, I was only adding new countries to this list--not sure why I did that. So all the duplicate countries I visited didn't make this thread. And then I only added books I thought were somewhat representative of the place. For example, I didn't add Alias Grace for Ontario or Surfacing for Quebec, because the books don't represent those provinces very well. And I could have checked off Greece, but all the Greek stuff I read was Ancient, and it didn't feel right either. Oh well, that's how the year went.

I'm also wondering why I decided not to include memoirs in my map, since I look at them as literature too. Hmmmm. I really should revisit this and add the memoirs I've read, unless someone can give me a reason not to. :-)

Go for it Nickelini :-)

Nickelini, I think memoirs can be very apropos. On my thread, I started doing only books set outside my own country but now that I think about it, I should have included books from my own country that I felt were important or showed something about us. That said, every book tells something about a culture whether it is a piece of literary fiction or a 'bestseller'. So, one has to decide what is worthy and what is not, I guess.

28. after the quake, by Haruki Murakami, Japan

This is a collection of six short stories that all take place in Japan in the month after the 1995 Kobe earthquake. None of the characters are directly involved in the quake, but all have some tie to Kobe. The stories are all rather different from each other, but they all have a main character involved in an unusual relationship, and something happens to shake up their world view. The quakes in this book are all internal.

My favourite story is the most unusual one: "Super-frog Saves Tokyo," and from what I understand, it is the most typical Murakami of the bunch. If that's true, I'll definitely read more of his work in the future.

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Back in January I read Fruit, by Brian Francis, which covers life in 1980s Sarnia, Ontario just beautifully. I didn't think to update my map then, but it just dawned on me. Ontario should be coloured in anyway, as I've read lots of books set in that province.

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Well, there's a nice chunk of red on my map! Thanks to Late Nights on Air, by Elizabeth Hay. Set in the Northwest Territories, it captures the feeling of the True North with evocative language and imagery.

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Here's my updated map that includes Alberta--now that I've read the wonderful Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King.

create your own visited country map

I've decided to include memoirs here, so I've updated the map to show:

29. Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali Somalia
30. Paula, Isabel Allende Chile

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Updating my map to include Manitoba, setting for Under the Ribs of Death, by John Marlyn.

I hadn't been by in a while. Way cool maps and nice progress for Great Britain and Canada. I'm glad you're including memoirs - one you might check out that I read recently is the Baburnama, the story of the Uzbek shah who founded the Mogul dynasty in India (it can get you Uzbekistan! And you could also do it for the India read next month!).

31. Egypt

Palace Walk, Naguib Mahfouz (translated by William M Hutchins & Olive E Kenny)

1956, Egyptian literature

Rating: 3.5/5

Why I Read This Now: It was the January book for my book club.

Comments: This is a story of a middle class Egyptian family in Cairo from around 1917-1919. Mahfouz does a wonderful job of bringing the reader behind the very closed doors of Egyptian life. In fact, one of the strongest emotions it pulled from me was deep gratitude that I didn't live in WWI-era Egypt.

The most interesting character was the husband/father, who was a tyrannical control-freak who was extreme even in his time and place. I think my deep loathing of this character is proof of Mahfouz's talent as a writer.

The language in this novel is straight-forward, and the chapters are short, which makes for quite an easy read. However, the book was very long (or maybe it just seemed so to me because I have a huge stack of other reading obligations looming that I must get to). My other complaint about this book was that I didn't like any of the characters--the wife was far too weak (I was hoping that she'd murder her husband in her sleep, or get revenge on him in some way). Their adult children were all dislikable in some way, and the youngest child was not endearing either. In fact, the only character I liked was the daughter-in-law, but her part was tiny.

Overall, I liked this book--I think it was certainly well written-- but it's not something I would have picked up on my own.

Recommended for: anyone looking to experience a slice of life in the Cairo of 90 years ago.

Wow. I can't believe I haven't visited my own thread for over a year. I guess I didn't travel to any new literary places over the year. Maybe 2011 will take me someplace new. I think I need to see more of South America.



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or write about it on the open travel guide

create your own personalized map of Canada
or check out ourVancouver travel guide

Two more territories and two more provinces to go!

Updating to add Quebec, which is a vividly described in the wonderful novel Lullabies for Little Criminals, by Heather O'Neill.

edited to add: Nova Scotia -- The Bishop's Man, Linden macIntyre

Any idea how you are going to finish you Canada map?

Good to see you back on this thread. Any ambitions to read from particular bits of the world, or are you just filling in as you go along?

Andy -- sorry I missed your message and questions. I didn't mean to be rude.

Since I was here I read Nova Scotia (The Bishop's Man by Linden MacIntyre). For New Brunswick it will be Mercy Among the Children, by David Adams Richards and for Nunavut it will be Consumption by Kevin Patterson--I own both of those. I don't know what I want to read for the Yukon. I spent two summers there as a child, so I'll tend to be picky about it ;-)

As for the rest of the world, I pretty much fill in as I go . . . I just read a book from Bangladesh, and I have one coming up for South Korea, so I'll colour in two more countries next time I update that map.

create your own visited country map

Just updating my map. In 2011 I had literary travels to 16 different countries, two of which were new to me: Bangladesh and South Korea.

create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Oh my, I only got to colour in two more countries in 2012:

Finland, The Summer Book, Tove Jansson
Trinidad Soucouyant, David Chariandy

Looking at what I have lined up for 2013, I will be reading more widely. Not sure how many new countries I'll cross though. We'll see.

Glad you told us which countries, because it would have taken me forever to find Finland filled in :-)

The Netherlands

The Dinner, Herman Koch, 2009, translated from the Dutch 2012, audiobook


Cover comments: yes, this will work.

Comments: The only thing I knew about The Dinner was that it was one of those books that people really want to talk about after they read it, and that it had been a best seller in Europe before being translated into English. So when I started listening to it, I had no expectations of any kind. And in that spirit, I'm going to tell you almost nothing about the book so you too can approach it with a clear mind.

I will just give you the briefest summary. The first person narrator, Paul, and his wife Claire, go to a preposterously priced and very pretentious restaurant for an evening with Paul's brother Serge and his wife Babette. Everyone expects Serge to become the next prime minister of the Netherlands, and Paul has some pretty intense sibling rivalry issues going on (the reader of this audiobook amusingly uses a tone of utter disdain whenever he says "Serge."). At first, Paul's acerbic thoughts on his brother and the restaurant are rather amusing, but as you read on, things start to get dark. And then they get very dark. And that's all I'm going to tell you.

Recommended for: It's no secret that none of the characters in this book are likable. If vile people upset you, don't read this book. Although the story happens over the course of the dinner, there are flashbacks, so you also have to like the non-linear story. And there is lots of social commentary--some of it not very nice. And then there is the violence. In short, if you like twisty, compelling books with amoral characters behaving badly, this is the book for you. In that way, it reminded me of The Slap, although I think I like this one better. I can see this being a great book club book because there is so much going on and so much to say about it, and because people seem to really like or really hate it. I won't be recommending it for my book club, however, as I know that they would all just hate it so much. But I liked it!

Rating: 4 stars

Why I Read This Now: book from my wishlist available on audiobook.

French Polynesia (Tahiti)

Frangipani, Celestine Hitiura Vaite, 2004


Cover comments: Painting by Shelagh Armstrong. I adore this cover--the colours are gorgeous and the style really says "Polynesia". I also love the title, as frangipani (aka plumeria) are my favourite tropical flowers



Comments: Frangipani follows the life of a Tahitian woman, Materena, from her days as a young mother through to the years when her three children leave home, although the focus is on the tumultuous time when her daughter Leilani is a teenager. The novel often looks at Materena's fairly traditional Tahitian approach to life versus Leilani's modern and progressive outlook. Frangipani also highlights the strong bonds of the vast network of aunties, cousins, and grandmothers that Leilani and Materena can rely on for support.

There is little plot to this novel--it's told in vignettes that hop forward in chronological order. The third person narrator has a robust voice full of traditional Tahitian folk wisdom and island patois (both Tahitian and French), and this gave Frangipani a unique charm. I enjoyed spending time with these characters and getting a glimpse of Tahitian culture.

Frangipani was nominated for the Orange Prize.

Rating: 4.5 stars. I liked this better than other LTers, although I do find more positive comments out there in the greater Internet. I will definitely track down her other books.

Why I Read This Now: I bought this a few years ago and tucked it away for any potential tropical vacations in my future. When a trip to Maui suddenly came up, this was the first thing I packed. It was the perfect book to read on a Hawaiian vacation.

Recommended for: There aren't a lot of Tahitian authors around, so if you're interested in reading globally, here's your chance.

Stats update:

I've updated the map in post #1. I think I've "visited" 37 countries. So many more to go . . .

Sweden (map at top not allowing updates at this time. Try later)

Astrid and Veronika, Linda Olsson, 2007


Cover comments: uninspired (even when not blurred)

Comments: Veronika, a 30 year old woman, returns to Sweden after a tragedy in New Zealand. She plans to write her second book, and holes herself away in a cottage on the edge of a village. Next door lives Astrid, an elderly recluse. They slowly develop a friendship and tell each other all the horrible things that have happened in their lives.

Rating: I have no idea what I think of this book. When I read the glowing reviews here at LT, I can see what people loved about it, but I didn't love it. And when I see the poor reviews, I can agree with those too. I think part of my confusion is that I don't understand Astrid's actions in a particular situation, and if they are what I understand them to be, well, . . . how horrifying. She killed her much loved baby? Really? Why?But I think I missed something. I also had a problem with the over description of detail --it got tiresome. But on the other hand, there was some dreamy, evocative writing too.

Recommended for: Well, since I have no clue what I think of this book, I'm not really one to say, but if you like quiet books, you might like this one.

Why I Read This NOw: audio book

Wow, I haven't updated this thread since 2014. I know I haven't read many "new" countries because my focus has been elsewhere, but I should be able to list some . . . .off to check.

ETA - Yes, as I suspected, not many new countries to add to my list. The only one I can find is Rhodesia, The Grass is Singing. Some would say this doesn't belong on the list because the author was a British citizen. However, I find that a shallow assessment, since at the time she wrote this novel, she'd never lived in Britain. So Rhodesia it is.

Yemen

I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced, Nujood Ali & Delphine Minoui, translated by Linda Coverdale, 2010.


Cover comments: Yes, this is the girl in the story and not just some random Muslim child. Who can look at this photo and not be appalled that she was married off? What else would anyone want on the cover? So not art or anything, but the right cover all the same.

Warning: maybe some spoilerish comments throughout.

Comments: Nujood was born in a remote village of Yemen to illiterate parents living in dire poverty. Something that is not explained happened when she was quite young that caused the family to flee in shame to the big city, where they were even worse off. Many more children were born. To reduce the number of mouths to feed, at age 9, her khat-chewing father sold her to a 30-something man who took her back to his village where he repeatedly raped and beat her. On a visit to her family several months later, they made it clear that they wouldn't help her, so she walked into the courthouse and asked for a divorce. She met a human rights lawyer who took on her cause, got her divorce, and ended up being one of Glamour magazine's women of the year in 2008 (along with Hillary Clinton, Nicole Kidman and Condoleezza Rice).

If one thing stands out about this story, it is Nujood's extreme courage in the face of hundreds (if not thousands) of years of tradition, and for that, it's worth reading.

In addition to the family's forced move to the city, two other stories were glossed over in I Am Nujood -- the first were the details of obtaining the divorce. "Insurmountable odds" went to "Check! Divorce granted" in a page or two. I'm good with this--don't need to know the details. It did come off as abrupt though. Second, bad things happened to her older sisters, but we never find out what went on. It's like we were hearing the story from a 10 year old's perspective . . .oh right. Anyway, I would have liked to know more on their stories. Were they kidnapped? Sold? Having affairs? (the last one hinted at, but I find bloody unlikely seeing they were like 14 years old.)

Nujood just wanted to be a child, and to get an education. Her experience made her want to grow up to be a human right's lawyer and help end child marriage. That's where the book ends. Sadly, but perhaps not unexpectedly, things didn't work out that way. Articles from various newspapers show a disappointing turn in her fortunes. Her case brought world attention to Yemen, and it was unwelcome. After her one trip to New York, her passport was confiscated and she wasn't allowed to leave the country to bring more shame on Yemen. Her family was resentful of the attention on her. The law prohibited her from payment for the book, so the publisher was forced to send her father monthly payments. Her father rarely gives her money. The publisher bought her a two-story house, but her father married some more women and moved wives 3 and 4 into one floor while renting out the other. Nujood was forced out of her house. Despite people from outside Yemen trying to help and guide her, Nujood's education was sporadic and current information shows that she is about age 19, remarried and with two children of her own. Really though, if she escaped the poverty, traditionalism and all the other oppressive factors in her life, it would have been a fairy tale.

Rating: 4 stars. I know this is a book that I will remember for years to come. Several readers give this two stars because they say it is poorly written and doesn't have an authentic voice-- the first person account being simultaneously too sophisticated and too simplistic. But I wouldn't expect grand writing from a book of a young Yemeni girl's story, written by a journalist in French and then translated again into English. Maybe this would have been better as a third person account, or maybe more in-depth if written as a literary novel that delved into the events and issues in more detail. Okay, maybe. But complaints that this book is shallow are, to me, shallow.

Why I Read This Now: I knew this would be a short and undemanding read, which it was, and so the right book at the right time.

Recommended for: Other than people who have read up on child marriage, I'd recommend this book to everyone with the maturity to handle the subject matter. It's written for a mass-market audience, which I actually think is the right approach, since it's more important to reach a broad audience than to satisfy the artistic requirements of a literary audience.

>43 Nickelini: Welcome back! I'd agree with the Rhodesia (as it was then) definition.

This appears to be a thread that I remember every few years. I'm going to try to remember it more often, as I usually read about 25% translated fiction every year.

These are the countries I've "visited" so far on this thread:

Australia
Afghanistan
Canada
China
Czech Republic
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Egypt
France
French Polynesia
Germany
Iran
India
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Kenya
Mexico
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nigeria
Norway
Pakistan
Rhodesia
Russia
South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sweden
UK
US
Yemen

And since I last posted, I found:

Austria - Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, Handke; Dream Story, Schnitzler
Belgium - Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill, Verhulst
Finland - Moomin series
Iceland - Miss Iceland, Olafsdottir; Blue Fox, Sjon
Switzerland - Revenge of the Black Cat, Alves; Twelve Nights, Faes; To the Back of Beyond, Stamm; Cold Shoulder & On the Edge, Werner; Last Vanities & Sweet Days of Discipline, Jaeggy

I only joined this group in December, so a latecomer, but it's a nice way to keep track of my international reading. Are the books you found (>46 Nickelini:) ones you found on your TBR shelves or ones you've read and are just now adding to the list?

>47 labfs39: These are ones I read since I last posted here in 2017. If I posted my TBR, the list would be huge. And I remembered two more . . .

Albania - The Country Where No One Dies, Vorpsi
Denmark - A Fairy Tale, Bengtsson