Around the World in 80 Books discussion

Following my thread, Barbara's three-quarter-century, I am working backwards from 1945, the year before I was born, to 1900.
My initial choice for 1945 was The Glass Menagerie, USA. A family drama where, according to the introduction, "every character seeks flight".
However, now that it seems possible to include books from 46 different countries, I may substitute a different title for either 1945 or 1944.

1944 The Razor's Edge
Author: British. Principal characters: USA. Setting: initially USA, later France. Like the last book, the story begins with a young woman, two members of her immediate family, and the question of marriage, this being the only future imaginable. The narrator, the author himself, is drawn in to the story, There the resemblance ends. Isabel's uncle and mother are snobs with pretensions to friends among the nobility. Isabel's fiance, after a traumatic experience in the war, has no interest in finding a well-paid job or influential friends. It transpires that his interest lay in spiritual development, perhaps a quest for the God he does not believe in. And the narrator occasionally lets slip that he has a story of his own.

1943 The Little Prince
Author: French. Setting: Libya.
Principal character: child from an asteroid.
I had known of this book since I was a teenager, My French teacher referred to the first few pages, where the author describes how, as a small child, he drew a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. The grown-ups were not impressed, which put him off learning to draw - until he met the little prince. This book is his revenge on grown-ups! Finally I have read the whole thing, in the original French.

1942 The Stranger
Setting: Algeria. Mersault is arrested for murder, only to find that his interrogators are much more interested in his failure to weep at his mother's funeral. Again, my French teacher introduced me to the book, but all that I remember was on the first page or the last.

1941 Chess Story
Setting: Austria et al. Aboard ship from New York to Buenos Aires, a Scotsman challenges the world chess champion, who is wiping the floor with him until a quiet stranger offers advice. But how does the stranger come to know so much about chess? I first came across this book when attending an evening class on the German Novelle - longer than a short story, shorter than a novel.

1940 An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth
Setting: India, also South Africa. This book quickly struck me as being a surprisingly frank and readable account of Gandhi's life up to 1921 and his attempts to live up to his ideals and convictions in all aspects: childhood misdemeanours, practising as an honest barrister where bribes and deception were commonplace, keeping a vow to his mother in spirit as well as in letter ... Where he writes about political movements and events, it's slightly harder to follow, as he says "I have written about this elsewhere." I may not agree with his attempts to live authentically in matters of diet, medicine, and bringing up children, but cannot but be moved by his finak sentence:
"In bidding farewell to the reader, for the time being at any rate, I ask him to join with me in prayer to the God of Truth that he may grant me the boon of Ahimsa [not-hurting, non-violence] in mind, word and deed.

1939 Mister Johnson
Setting: Nigeria
At first I didn't like this book or the principal character, who came over as being both a fool and a knave. I then decided it was meant to be funny, and became more involved in the story. Nobody - native or Brit - comes too well out of the narrative, and Johnson has his admirable moments, including the recruitment of local villagers to clear the way for a new road by making it into a game, with drummers and a prize for the best village.

1938 Homage to Catalonia
Setting: Spain (Barcelona and the front line)
At the moment, when every news broadcast is full of eyewitness reports from Ukraine, it was interesting to read George Orwell's account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. I got a bit confused with all the political parties, trade unions, and militia until I read the last two chapters of the Penguin Modern Classics edition, which had been moved from places earlier in the book.

1937 Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
Setting: Poland
Bruno Schulz was an art teacher, and some of the short stories seem more like paintings, with detailed portrayals of the seasons and not much by the way of plot, what there is being dreamlike. Some show the influence of Kafka, when the narrator's father is metamorphosed into an insect, and there are touching pictures of old age.

1936 War with the Newts
Setting: Begins on an island near Sumatra, Also Czech, and all over (and under) the world, but now that it looks as if I can choose all 46 books "from" different countries, I am counting this as Sumatra
I really enjoyed this story of human greed for wealth, power and Lebensraum bringing the world to the edge of mass destruction. But destruction of humans or of newts? As the growing submarine population causes new problems for international law, the world's governments debate what is to be done, with Britain stubbornly refusing to get involved. Capek was a prophet not only for his own day, but for ours,

1935 The African Queen
Setting: German Central Africa (Tanzania?)
Deceased missionary's sister, yearning to strike a blow for England in the First World War, meets Cockney engineer anxious to save his own skin. She persuades him to take his decrepit launch down the unnavigable rapids in order to blow up a German warship. Improbably, they survive.

1934 Burmese Days
Setting: Burma (Myanmar)
Following the death of her parents, Elizabeth is shipped out to an uncle and aunt in a small town in Burma with the aim of finding a husband among the small British community. One possible decamps, another (who is the main character of the novel) shoots himself. Third time lucky.

1933 Some Must Watch
Setting: Wales
Reminiscent of a Gothic novel. A young girl takes up a post in a large house in a remote village, with an eccentric family. Rumours of a mass murderer lead to her being confined to the house, while the narrator gives dire warnings of what lies ahead. Danger and rescue come from unexpected sources.

1932 Sunset Song
Setting: Scotland
First part of a trilogy about a small farming community, before, during and after the First World War, including the devastating effects of deforestation.

1931
Setting: China
Another first part of a trilogy, covering the life of a farmer from the day of his marriage almost to his deathbed, in good years and bad. I was shocked that his sons had no names until they went to school, and that his elder daughter was called "the little slave" from her birth, and "the fool" from early childhood. Wang Lung works hard, is devoted to "the good earth", and buys more land when he can. In a prolonged famine, he rode on a "firewagon" (train) to a southern city where he pulled a rickshaw, his wife and children begged, and they bought rice from the public kitchen. The family end up rich, too rich, and the youngest son leaves home muttering about the Revolution.

1930 Narcissus and Goldmund
Setting: Germany
Two young men meet in a monastery school, where one is a novice and a teacher, the other a schoolboy. Narcissus, who has a gift of knowing what is going on in the lives of others better than they know themselves, helps Goldmund to recognize that he is grieving for his mother, whose name could not be spoken, and that his future lies outside the monastery. He wanders the countryside, beds many women, and eventually finds a calling as an artist. Many years later, they meet again, each recognizing the other's gifts. The text of my copy had two peculiarities - indiscriminate use of personal pronouns he/she/it and even I/you, and frequent places where a few lines of text are repeated several time before the story moves on. I suppose these are errors in translation and typesetting - but perhaps not?

1929 A High Wind in Jamaica
Setting: Jamaica and Caribbean sea
This story of children accidentally captured by pirates emphasizes the difference between a child's view of what's going on and an adult view. The opening scenes in Jamaica include an earthquake and a hurricane, but for ten-year-old Emily, the death of the family cat is what most troubles her.

1928 The Skylark of Space
Setting: USA and a planet in outer space
Discovery of a new element and its interaction with copper enables space travel at many times the speed of light; but when they run out of copper, the astronauts need to find a planet where they can replenish stocks. There are human villains, but the one who survives is willing to work with the others faced with common enemies in deep space. Once they return to earth, all bets are off! See the sequel?

1927 The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Setting: Peru, 1714
A Jesuit, pondering divine intervention, investigates the lives of the five people killed when a bridge collapses. But what is more interesting is the effect of the disaster on some survivors.

1926 The Richest Man in Babylon
Setting: Babylon, Mesopotamia (Iraq)
This book uses the medium of folk tales to convey some basic principles of personal economics which still apply today: notably, keep 10% of your income and invest it wisely.

1925 The Trial
Setting: Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic)
To my surprise, there was no trial. An arrest, a preliminary enquiry, and Josef K is free to return to his work as a bank clerk until the matter is resolved. Neither he or the reader is ever told of what crime he has been accused. I got lost in the complexities of the advice he is given from lawyers, but woke up to the absurdity of the court painter claiming expertise.

1924 The Magic Mountain
Setting: Switzerland
Before starting an apprenticeship, Hans decides on a three-week visit to his cousin in a sanitorium, Instead, he is diagnosed with TB himself and ends up staying for seven years in the strange institution, where time is suspended. I found the book uneven in style and readability, and skipped long passages of philosophical quarrels between a Freemason and a Jesuit.

1923 The Prophet
Setting: a port in the Middle East. I count this as Lebanon, the author's country of origin.
Before setting sail, the main character gives short talks as requested by townspeople. Some passages are well-known, especially one often quoted at weddings, and others deserve to be. However, the text I downloaded from Kindle Unlimited was almost unreadable, having some curious corruptions I have seen in a few other online books, as if a defective copy has been repaired by someone with an inadequate knowledge of English, using colloquialisms such as "guys" and "kids" which do not fit the general style of the text. "Oak tree" becomes, first, "oktree", then "alrighttree." I suspect piracy.

1922 The Enchanted April
Setting: a small castle outside a village in Italy.
After struggling with the last three books, I was in the mood for a light romance, and enjoyed my introduction to Elizabeth von Arnim.

1921 The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles
Setting: Greece and nearby countries
I wish I had had this book as a child. I was convinced that the other kids knew a lot more about Greek mythology than I did.

1920 Chéri
Setting: France
I chose this book after several attempts - books which turned out not to be first published in 1920 or sufficiently set in a country not represented elsewhere.
An unusual relationship between a woman of 50 and her gigolo/toyboy.

1919 South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition 1914-1917
Setting: Antarctica
An ambitious purpose - to cross the frozen continent - quickly ran into the difficulties which would prevent its completion - wind, weather, and pack ice locking the ship between floes and bergs. All of this is detailed in this account based on the ship's log and other notes. Amazingly, almost everyone survived. The appendix shows how, in spite of everything, scientific work was carried out which had implications far beyond the Antarctic.

1918 Hell Screen
Setting: Japan
In the style of a folk tale about a court painter requiring real-life atrocities as models for his depiction of hell, this book was included, along with my 1941 selection, in a Penguin series of Mini Modern Classics

1917 Growth of the Soil
Setting: Norway
Reminiscent of The Good Earth (see 1932 above), this novel tells the story of a hard-working, successful and dedicated farmer and his family. Isak clears and cultivates virgin land outside a village, not far from the coast and the border with Sweden. The progress of civilization is shown by the coming of a telegraph line, new agricultural equipment, and the attempt to develop a copper mine.

1916 Greenmantle
Setting: Turkey (et alia)
In this successor to The 39 Steps, Richard Hannay's army service in the first world war is interrupted by a special mission to unearth and spoil a plot to provoke an Arab rebellion led by a Muslim prophet, the "Greenmantle" of the title.

1915 Victory
Setting: Java and a small island
Written just before the outbreak of World War I, Conrad added a note that neither the unpleasant German hotelkeeper nor the book's title had any connection with that event.

1914 The Treaty of Waitangi: How New Zealand Became a British Colony
Setting: New Zealand
I would never have discovered this book, let alone read it, had I not been looking for a 1914 publication from a country not previously represented in this challenge! A fascinating and detailed account of how the British government found itself "coerced by circumstance" to become involved in New Zealand's journey towards colonial status, and the negotiations between missionaries, the British nominees as Resident and Consul, and the heads of the Maori tribes. The Kindle copy was hard to read because of the interspersion of footnotes in the middle of sentences or paragraphs of the main text.

1913 The Panama Canal (1913) Illustrated
Setting: Panama
Another book I would not usually have read, this begins with a eulogy about the opening of the canal, ahead of schedule and within the budget - very appropriate in the week that London's Elizabeth line opens anything but! The author is passionate about every detail of his subject, from engineering and safety measures, through the medical and social arrangements for a healthy and happy workforce, to speculations about the effect on the political and social development of Latin America.

1912 The Complete Plays of J. M. Synge
Setting: Ireland
I studied The Playboy of the Western World and Riders to the Sea for A Level in 1962-3, and it was a joy to revisit them. Of the other plays, my favourite is The Well of the Saints, about a blind couple whose sight is restored; not an unmixed blessing!

1911 In Desert and Wilderness
Setting: Egypt, Sudan and Kenya
A Polish teenage boy and a little English girl, children of engineers working on the Egyptian canal system, are kidnapped and taken to Khartoum, arriving just after the fall of the city in 1885. Then they escape, and the journey becomes even more dangerous...

1910 Prester John
Setting: South Africa
Like the same author's Greenmantle (1916) and my 1911 choice, the plot concerns a mass uprising around a charismatic leader, in this case a Zulu who sees himself as a reincarnation of the legendary priest-king Prester John. The story is told from the point of view of the hero, a young Scots emigre running a village store.

1909The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories
Setting: Ecuador
Gruesome short stories

1908 The Wind in the Willows
Setting: England
A children's classic, based on bedtime stories the author told to his son. I knew some of the stories from a dramatized version we read at school, but reading the original I found some delightful details, including a conversation between Rat and a swallow about migration. The main characters - Mole, Rat, Badger and Toad - are well-drawn.

1907 The Willows
Setting: Hungary
As one would expect from Algernon Blackwood, the genre is Horror. In this short story, the narrator and a Swedish friend are canoeing down the river Danube when they take refuge from a storm by camping on a small island. After that, it gets weird.

1906 White Fang
Setting: Canada (and USA)
Part dog, part wolf, a cub's encounters with humans present him with many challenges as nature and nurture battle it out.

1905 Doctor Glas
Setting: Sweden (Stockholm)
The doctor is accustomed to resisting the pleas of young women for abortions - but his sympathy with the parson's wife leads him into an obsession with the idea of murdering the parson.

1904 Green Mansions
Setting: Guyana
Young man exploring the jungle strays from a tribal village and is captivated by a young woman with a bird-like language. He joins her in an ill-fated quest to discover her own people.

1903 The Cherry Orchard
Setting: Russia
A woman returns home from Paris to discover that the estate is being put up for auction to pay the family's debts. A local businessman, previously one of her serfs, urges her to sell the land for holiday cottages. The text reveals class conflicts at the end of the nineteenth century. To get the full benefit of the extraordinary characters I had to watch a TV version on YouTube.

1902 L'Immoraliste
Setting: Tunisia
I was expecting more about sexuality from this novel by Andre Gide, but the protagonist's encounters with Arab boys are handled with a light touch. This is Michel's account of his marriage to Marcelline, sandwiched between two journeys to Tunisia: their honeymoon, marked by his serious illness and a recovery which he sees as a rebirth, and a return to the country, ending in her illness and death. I would say that Michel is more egoist than immoralist: a self-centred young man who has renounced the values of his past without finding any to take their place.

1901 My Brilliant Career
Setting: Australia
The title put me off, thinking it was a boastful autobiography; but, early in this story of a teenager growing up on a ranch in the outback, I discovered the title was an ironic reflection on the drudgery of her life. A visit to a doting grandmother and aunt awakens her love of fun and mischief, but she cannot believe that she is capable of loving and being loved.

1900 The Castaways of the Flag: The Final Adventures of the Swiss Family Robinson
Setting: an island near Malaysia
Jules Verne wrote two sequels to The Swiss Family Robinson, of which this is the second. Johan Wyss's original story, published in 1812, ends with the arrival of a ship, and the departure to England of two of the four children, while the other two and their parents decide to stay on the island. In this book, the travellers have decided to return, but are captured during a mutiny, cast away, and they too are shipwrecked. I prefer the more practical, if pedagogical, tone of the original.

To wind up the project, I can now replace the 1945 entry with
The Moomins and the Great Flood.
Setting: Finland
The first of the books about the moomintrolls.
This makes 46 books, each linked with a different country (or, in one case, Space), for the 46 years from 1900 to 1945.