Around the World discussion

A shame I know, to read from only 24 countries and territories.

Please note that if I have read multiple books from a country, I am listing only one, the one I liked most.

I am sticking to fiction and poetry only.

Fiction:

1. Turkey - The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk
2. Czech Republic - The Joke by Milan Kundera
3. Pakistan - Trespassing: A Novel by Uzma Aslam Khan
4. Brazil - Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis
5. India - Fire on the Mountain by Anita Desai
6. Argentina - The Aleph and Other Stories by J.L. Borges
7. Colombia - Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Marquez
8. Canada - The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
9. Albania - The Palace of Dreams by Ismail Kadare
10. Japan - Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
11. Nigeria - Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
12. Sudan - Minaret by Leila Aboulela
13. The United States - The Pearl by John Steinbeck
14. England - To the Lighthouse by Virgina Woolf
15. Switzerland(?) - Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
16. Russia - The Death of Ivan Ilyich/Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy
17. Ireland - The Gathering by Anne Enright
18. Lebanon/France(?) - Samarkand Amin Maalouf
19. West Indies/Britain(?) - A House for Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul

Poetry:

20. Romania - Poems of Paul Celan by Paul Celan
21. Chile - The Captain's Verses (Los versos del capitan) by Pablo Neruda
22. Arabia/Medieval Syria - The Diwan of Abu'l-ALA . tr Henry Baerlein
23. Iran/Persia - The Divan [partial]
24. Occupied Palestine - A River Dies of Thirst by Mahmood Darwish

Love the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, I have his book Unfortunately, It Was Paradise which is excellent. A River Dies of Thirst sounds like a must have.

If you like Darwish's other works you will definitely enjoy the one I mentioned. It's his last collection and his piercing perspective comes to life with full force :)

I am also wondering about #15 on my list. Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. The novel tells a quintessentially Indian classical story and as such has nothing to do with being Swiss or German.

I'm also wondering about the nationalities of writers. How do you categorise writers with dual nationalities or those who are writing in a language or about a topic that doesn't match their nationality?

Is Milan Kundera's later French works qualify as French novels? He's is originally a Czech native whose earlier works are in Czech language? Should Nabokov be classified as Russian or American if we're reading one of his novels which were written originally in Russian? Is Salman Rushdie Indian or British? Was Khalil Gibran, who like Nabokov wrote with equal facility in his native Arabic as well as adopted English, Lebanese or American? Do you consider V.S. Naipaul to be Caribbean, or Indian or British, or Indian-Caribbean-British?

Jibran wrote: "...How do you categorise writers with dual nationalities or those who are writing in a language or about a topic that doesn't match their nationality?..."

True, those facts are more congenial in a biography than a reading list. I make similar choices when arranging my library shelves by a theme (there're lots of them). If I arranged them serendipitously, I might not find them. But, for a list, serendipity might be okay (the value-laden characteristics don't matter, only the reading does). The choice is yours to find meaning in the list you make.

Jibran wrote: "If you like Darwish's other works you will definitely enjoy the one I mentioned. It's his last collection and his piercing perspective comes to life with full force :)

I am also wondering about #1..."

For that cross pollination of language and culture and inability to categorise an author can often be what is most appealing, I recently read Portrait of a Mother as a Young Woman which was written by Friedrich Christian Delius, a German writer, it was translated from German but the novel takes place in Rome and is very much about how it was for this young woman being in Rome during the war. Interesting too that it was a female stream of conscious voice, told by a man.

I think there are often dual influences and we are free to choose where to to place them and we may also change our mind having read the book in question, particularly if recommending it to others.