I may currently be a woman of routine, home by 7:30 every
night to put the baby to bed and pack a lunch for the preschooler, but there was
a time when I could hop on a train and be in Istanbul in 12 hours or less. These days, my
only travel to new places has been through books (and of course blogs like Andrea's and Holly's). I read when the Jonester (sorry! another nickname!)
nurses, so I’ve been logging lots of page-miles in the past 10 months.
After I read What Is the What I felt like I had learned a
lot about Sudan, where I had previously known next to nothing. So I have decided to make it a
life goal to read a book about every country. This is where you
come in.
The list below contains, off the top of my head, some of the
countries about which I’ve read. Most of these books are novels, but I feel
they’ve given me a sense of the culture of these places. If you will, please
recommend books that you have loved that are set in other countries. Know the
great Nauruan novel? Togolese tome? Panamanian Pulp? Enlighten me.
Afghanistan:
Caravans (Leon Uris), The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
Australia:
One for the Road (Tony Horwitz)
China:
The Bonesetter’s Daughter (Amy Tan); Spring Moon (Bette Bao Lord)
Colombia:
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia-Marquez)
Congo:
The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
England:
too many to name
Egypt:
Palace Walk (Naguib Mahfouz)
France:
Chocolat (Joanne Harris)
India:
The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy), Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa
Lahiri)
Ireland:
Trinity (Leon Uris) Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
Japan:
The Lady and the Monk (Pico Iyer), Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
Mexico:
Like Water for Chocolate (Laura Esquivel)
Nepal:
Into Thin Air (Jon Krakauer) OK, that's more about insane mountain climbing culture, so I'd take recommendations for another, too.
Nigeria:
Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe): 50 years old this year! Must reread.
Oz: Wicked (Gregory Maguire)
Russia:
Fathers and Sons (Ivan Turgenev)
Sudan:
What Is the What (Dave Eggers)
Multicountry Eastern Europe: Bury Me Standing (Isabel Fonseca)
I have also read the excellent Falling Off the Map: Some
Lonely Places of the World (Pico Iyer), which covers several countries: North Korea, Argentina, Cuba, Iceland, Bhutan, Vietnam, Paraguay, and Australia.
My sister is sending me Three Cups of Tea, so Pakistan will
be checked off the list soon. (Cathy - if you haven't sent it already, don't worry. I can get it from the library.)
OK! *two brisk cheerleader hand claps* Let's go!
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