Thank you everyone for all the recommendations. Keep them coming! The comment section of this video can be a recommendation spot for everyone doing this challenge ❤👍
Serbia : Ivo andric Albania : Ibrahimi Anilda Marooco : Tahar Ben Jelloun especially "This blinding absence of Light" my favorite Ecuador : Monica Ojeda "Jawbone" Peru : Mario Vargas Llosa Colombia : Gabriel Garcia Marquez China : R. F. Kuang "Poppy war" Sierra Leone : Namina Forna Nigeria : Nnedi Okorafor Togo : Kossi Efoui India : Aravind Jayan Bosnia y Herzegovina : Mesa Selimovic "Death and the Dervish" South Africa : Deon Meyer Bolivia : Paz Soldan Vietnam : Ocean Vuong Palestina : Karim Kattan Taiwan : Chi Ta-Wei I hope you find what you are looking for there 😊
As for Finnish books, I definitely recommend Summer Book by Tove Jansson, which tells the story of a grandmother and her granddaughter at the family's summer cottage. Her moomin books are lovely too. The Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna can be worth reading too if you find war stories and the complexity of it all interesting!
Chalenge for UK and US: UK is acctually divided in parts like Scotland, Wales, N.Ireland and England. US is 50 states. I'm thinking to read novels based in those lands and/or writen by authors that are from mentioned places. If you'll track Nobel price for literature you'll find few names not from UK/US. Polish classic: Boleslaw Prus The doll (rich guy from poor house fells in love with spoilled woman, not happy ending) 10/10 I love this challenge! It's super fun.
A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiongo (Kenya) if you don't mind an intense look at a war. Voices from Cherynobl by Svetlana Akexievich (Ukraine) Dreams of Miryam Tair by Mhani Alaoui (Morocco) Palace of Illusion by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (India) Madonna with a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali (Turkey) Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa (Japan) Knight in a Panther Skin (Georgia) Kristin Lavransdottir by Sigrid Unset (Norway)
Hi Reesha, I'm from Aotearoa New Zealand. A few classic and modern classic authors from here are Katherine Mansfield, (the Garden Party, and many more) , Kerri Hulme (the Bone People), Whiti Ihimaera (the Whale Rider), Alan Duff (Once Were Warriors), Patricia Grace (Potiki). Some contemporary NZ authors that I love are Meg Mason (Sorrow and Bliss), Rebecca K. Reilly (Greta & Valdin) Pip Adam (Nothing to See) and Eleanor Catton (the Luminaries, Birnam Wood). We also have a national book award called the Ockham Awards - there are some great books shortlisted every year and lots of indigenous voices too so that would also be a good place to start.
Jordan The Bookseller's Notebooks-Jalal Barjas (check Samiha Khrais) Palestine Men in the Sun-Ghassan Kanafani (check Ibrahim Nasrallah) (check poet Mahmoud Darwish) Sudan Season of Migration to the North-Tayeb Salih Iraq The Corpse Washer-Sinan Antoon (check Inaam Kachachi) Kuwait The Bamboo Stalk-Saud Alsanousi (check Buthaina Al Eissa) Egypt Children of Gebelaawi/Children of the Alley (different translations)-Naguib Mahfouz Woman at Point Zero-Nawal El Saadawi (check Radwa Ashour) Lebanon Memoirs of a Vagrant Soul-Mikhail Naimy Spirits Rebellious-Kahlil Gibran Broken Wings-Kahlil Gibran I read the books mentioned in Arabic, so I don't really know how good is the English translation 😅.
I love challenges like this! Good luck with it, I know you can do it :D I've put some recommendations and suggestions below (disclaimer, I haven't read all of them myself though haha) Recs: Germany - Death in Venice by Thomas Mann Italy - Vita Nuova by Dante Czech Republic - The Trial by Franz Kafka Ireland - Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan Poland - Solaris by Stansilaw Lem Belgium - Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar Switzerland - Andorra by Max Frisch Austria - Chess by Stefan Zweig Romania - Bottled Goods by Sophie van Llewyn Senegal - At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop Dominica - Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys Antigua and Barbuda - Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid Japan - Ms. Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami Suggestions: Norway - The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas Denmark - The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen Bulgaria - Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov Ukraine - Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko Spain - The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón China - Half a Lifelong Romance by Eileen Chang Malaysia - The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng New Zealand - The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton Australia - Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay Zimbabwe - Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Some recs: France - Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky Nigeria - Half of a yellow sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie China - Wild Swans by Jung Chang Japan - The cat who saved books by Sosuke Natsukwaka
Such an interesting challenge! Much of the literature heavily focuses on Europe. This is a great way to broaden one's perspective and gain insights from very different viewpoints. I might consider doing the same for Latin America, Africa, and Asia.🥰
Im doing this challenge too, but my main goal is to mostly read middle grade or just plain fun books (though my list isn't looking very middle gradey right now). So yeah, I'm reading quite different stuff from you. I also have a list for memoirs or historical non fiction from every country (which is a challenge I'll be doing after the middle grade fun challenge).
Uruguay - Springtime in a Broken Mirror by Mario Benedetti; Hungary - The Paul Street Boys by Ferenc Molnár; Brazil - The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector /or The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis. Good luck!
As a chilean, I don´t like to recommend Neruda (yes, he´s a Nobel and acclaimed so it will appear in every top chilean authors list, but currently under cancellation due to his problematic life and alleged r4pe description on one of his autobiographical books). I recommend our other Nobel prize winner and a woman none the less, Gabriela Mistral (poetry. Far less problematic than Neruda). Also, a contemporary chilean author to look for is Isabel Allende, she's big now and have some very acclaimed novels (magical realism) like The house of the spirits or The japanese lover. A classical children's literature author we also have Marcela Paz, and her Papelucho, which depicts the costumbrist adventures of a highly imaginative boy and is part of every chilean kid formation, the way Tom Sawyer or Little women are for the US.
Rajmohan's Wife is actually an Indian book. It's a Bengali book for sure, but not a Bangladeshi one. Bengali is spoken over both in Bangladesh and West Bengal (which is a state of India).
I am glad to hear that you have finally embarked upon this challenging job of reading around the world. I wish you all luck hoping to learn some classical literature of the globe scanned by you.
Elena Knows is great for Argentina. The author Claudia Pinerio was nominated for the International Booker and Infinite Country by Patricia Engel for Columbia....great book!! Okay, Ive suggested gor three countries...so excited for you to take on this project!!
Greetings from Pakistan! Being an English Literature post-graduate, I have really enjoyed comparative literature around the world. I have a few suggestions that would be probably helpful in sampling the literary extravaganza around the world. Japan= The Sailor who fell from grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima and Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata Brazil= The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras De Cubas Ireland= Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift Italy= If on a Winter's night a Traveller by Italo Calvino France= The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas Russia= The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov Germany= Kafka's Metamorphosis Norway= Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen Sweden= The Ghost Sonata by August Strindberg Turkey= My name is Red by Orhan Pamuk United States= Moby Dick by Herman Melville Nigeria= Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Hope you find some of these titles engaging and informative.
I went to Spain 🇪🇸 recently and kept looking at books in bookshop’s , unfortunately very few English translations available. Thank you for recommending. Noted 📝
For Germany I highly recommend ‚Identitti by Mithu M. Sanyal‘. It talked a lot about identity and race and is inspired by the case of Rachel Dolezal. I think it depicts the German culture really well (I‘m German) and it‘s a current release. For Greenland I have ‚Crimson by Niviaq Korneliussen‘ on my tbr. For Italy I highly recommend Elena Ferrante. I had a list with a lot of authors from around the world. I need to see if I still have it somewhere.
Hi! I know I'm late but I just found your video. For Mexico (geographically considered part of North America) I recommend "Recollections of Things to Come" by Elena Garro, it's a precursor of magical realism and stunning! :)
Hello from Denmark! I know Hans Christian Andersen is probably the most famous Danish author, but I would love to recommend a female author from Denmark who has even been on the Danish bills 💵 Karen Blixen (mostly know for “Out of Africa” although that book is very racist so that takes away some of the reading joy no matter the “times were different”-argument) Karen Blixen has a very short (and I think not-racist) book called “Babette’s Feast” which is a classic in Danish literature. She also has other short stories. If you want to read something by Hans Christian Andersen I would highly recommend reading “The Little Mermaid” or “The Fir Tree” Wishing you luck with the project and looking forward to following the process!
I would love to try and do this too! So far I've read; The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevson (Demark), The Island by Ana Maria Matute (Spain), Around The World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne (France), Free by Lea Ypi (Albania), The Crow Road by Iain Banks (Scotland), Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi (Iran), We Have Always Been Here (Pakistan & Canada), The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Sri Lanka), and The Queens of Sarmiento Park by Camila Sosa Villada (Argentina).There are also a few on my TBR; A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o (Kenya), Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko (Australia), Crime and Punishment (Russia), In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez (Dominican Republic), The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (Chile), Unreconciled by Jesse Wente (Canada), Violets by Kyung Sook-Shin (South Korea), Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi (Oman), The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste (Eithiopia), Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Build Your House Around my Body by Violet Kupersmith (Vietnam).
From Austria Broch and his most important Moonwalkers or if you want something short try Bernhard. From Japan Mishima, Australia Peter Carey, Sweden is Strindberg and Llosa from Peru. From former Yugoslavia Andrich and from Serbia Goran Petrović, he is a contemporary writer.
Jorge Luis Borges is from Argentina. You read 100 years of Solitude, which is from Colombia. Pablo Neruda is from Chile. Juan Rulfo from Mexico.Alejo Carpentier is from Cuba. Don't know if you are counting Puerto Rico as part of the USA. If you aren't, there's Enrique Laguerre, Rene Marques, and Esmeralda Santiago. All of these authors have English translations of at least one of their books.
I'm going to read a Norwegian play next month called A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen it sounds good and is only about 120 pages. An interesting choice for Finland would be The Canine Kalevala, its Finnish folklore in an illustrated format with dog versions of the characters. The Poetic Edda is norse mythology, it's short and easy to read, I recommend the translation by Jackson Crawford
A doll house is a great read! As a Finnish person, I would be careful about calling Kalevala just a Finnish story. In recent years there have been discussions here in Finland on how much of Kalevala was appropriated from Karelian people (a Finnic ethnic group indigenous to the region of Karelia) without proper crediting to them. As for Finnish books, I definitely recommend Summer Book by Tove Jansson, which tells the story of a grandmother and her granddaughter at the family's summer cottage. The Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna can be worth reading too if you find war stories and the complexity of it all interesting!
@@jenskosmos Thanks for the info! I've been meaning to get to Linna "Unknown Soldier" and "Under the North Star". My last Finnish read was "The Core of the Sun" by Johanna Sinisalo, my next is "The Moonday Letters" by Emmi Itaranta. Also want to read "The Quantum Thief" by Hannu Rajaniemi and "Dog Park" by Sofi Oksanen
Hi Reesha! Hope all is well with you and your family. Wow! This is a really ambitious challenge. I wish you the best of luck and look forward to your next video! Have a great day!
Hi! So glad you've started this challenge too! I just got started 2 months ago. I'm from the Netherlands and for my country I'd recommend The secret diary of Hendrik Groen. For Belgium I'd recommend The Angel Maker by Stefan Brijs. Good luck with the challenge! I'm looking forward to hearing your updates! 😊
I see you have loads of recommendations already, so I'll just recommend When the Ground Is Hard by Malla Nunn for Eswatini/Swaziland. It's about two girls in a boarding school there. I read it recently, and it's really good. Good luck with this challenge! It'll be so much fun!
For Norway, two suggestions. One short, one long. For short, a play by Henrik Ibsen. You have many to choose from, but A Doll’s House is well known and an easy choice. For something longer, there is Nobel prize winner Sigrid Undset’s trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter.
For South America I would look at any books by Charco Press - which specialises in translating books from all over South America. For Japan my main rec would be The Sound of Waves which is a beautiful modern classic.
I’ve been chipping away at this challenge as well, it’s a long journey. A popular dutch book that’s translated into english is The Diner by Herman Koch. It’s a book that’s read a lot in schools and it’s very readable. For China I would recommend Eileen Chang. But I’ve haven’t read a lot of Chinese lit so far.
Good luck maybe when I gain the courage and discipline. I will join you on this channel. The nightingales are drunk sounds so interesting so I just put in an order! Cheers! Also if I can find a senegalese book, I will tell you
The UK is not a country 😭 the UK has four countries. But I totally understand not wanting to split them up. Vita Nostra is a Ukraine book. Before the Coffee Gets Cold is good for Japan. I recommend author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Akwaeke Emezi for Nigeria. Three Body Problem for China or I recommend the authors Mo Xiang Tong Xiu or Cixin Liu. I recommend Neon Yang for Singaporean author. Amie Kaufman is Australian.
Recommandation for Belgium :) "I Who Have Never Known Men" by Jacqueline Harpman or any book written by Georges Simenon with Commissaire Maigret (quite similar to Hercules Poirot) . There is also the author Amélie Nothomb too but I think ther stories are quite specials
I started this challenge in 2018. I also count autonomous regions and the countries within unions. For the UK I read books from England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland before I marked it as read. Though I am still looking for Cornish and Manx authors. Here are some recommends that I think fit your desire for delving more into the culture and history of the nations through this challenge: Mozambique - The First Wife by Paulina Chiziane Kurdistan - The Last Pomegranate Tree by Bachtyar Ali (5⭐️ read, incredible) Chad - Told by Starlight in Chad by Joseph Brahim Seid Iran - Women Without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur (some magical realism) Nigeria - Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo Abkhazia - The Goatibex Constellation by Fazil Iskander Libya - Ibrahim Al-Koni (any of his books) Taiwan - The Man with the Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-Yi (very odd and whimsical narrative on ecology and environmentalism) Morocco - In Praise of Defeat by Abdellatif Laabi (poetry) Jamaica - The Book of Night Women by Marlon James (trigger warning for everything) Romania - For Two Thousand Years by Mihail Sebastian Armenia - Three Apples fell from the Sky by Narine Abgaryan USA - Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo (poetry, highly recommend the audiobook) Egypt - The Journey of Ibn Fattouma by Naguib Mahfouz (very whimsical) Netherlands - An Untouched House by Willem Frederik Hermans (short but deeply affecting narrative on the Nazi occupation, I still think about this one regularly) Bosnia - Immigrant Blues by Goran Simić (poetry) Cambodia - Year of the Rabbit by Tian Veasna (graphic memoir) Czechia - Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal Albania - Free by Lea Ypi (memoir) Kosovo - Who Will Slay the Wolf by Ali Podrimja (poetry)
For Japan, besides whatever you read first, two classics. One short, one long. For short, Bashō’s masterwork Oku no Hosomichi, or The Narrow Road to the Deep North. For long, a very challenging work for which you will need a good, well annotated translation and some additional guides, Lady Murasaki’s Tale of Genji.
For Romania you can try anything by Mircea Cartarescu( I know he has a couple of books translated in english), Bengal nights by Mircea Eliade or if you like philosophy you can try Emil Cioran
I am so happy to have found your channel! I first came across your most recent where your niece and nephew recommend books, which was so sweet. I immediately subscribed and came to your channel page and saw this video and knew I was in the right place, between your recommendations and the comment section here I’ve added so many books to my TBR. I have some to recommend too, most I’ve read and some I haven’t, that I hope are helpful. I’ve read and recommend: Chile- The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán Greece- The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis Poland- Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk or Swallowing Mercury by Wioletta Greg (loved them both) Croatia- Mars by Asja Bakić Rwanda- Kibogo, or anything by Scholastique Mukasonga Argentina- Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin Australia- Born into this by Adam Thompson Haven’t read but I am looking forward to: Czech- The Little Town Where Time Stood Still by Bohumil Hrabal China- Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge Mexico- Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera Vietnam- The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Pham Que Mai North Korea- The Accusation by Bandi Ukraine- I Will Die in a Foreign Land by Kalani Pickhart Burundi- Small Country by Gaël Faye Hungary- The Door by Magda Szabó I also want to recommend Archipelago Books and Transit Books as two publishers that have helped me find so much translated fiction that I don’t know if I’d ever hear of if it weren’t for them, and also www.englishpen.org which is a Human Rights Org that supports writers at risk all over the world and is a great source for finding international literature, and they make it easy too.
Welcome to my channel. I hope you have a wonderful time here 😊 Thank you so much for all the book recommendations 👍💯 and the publisher recommendations. That’s really helpful.
Harari: I’ve read Sapiens. I really loved it and thought it very insightful, until I got to the last chapter where I thought he was descending into pop schlock. The cute title, 21. … for … 21, seemed like an announcement that it was destined to be all pop schlock, so I’ve avoided it. Let us know what you think.
Hi. The following suggestion is scope creep, but I’ll make it anyway. Some countries have amazingly diverse cultures, literary traditions, and histories. So you might want to include samples from those as well. For a familiar example, besides The Iliad for Greece, you might want to include something from more recent Greek literature. Moving to Spain, it contains a number very different literary traditions: e.g., Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Galician (overlapping Portugal), even Provençal could be included (overlapping France). Closer to home for you, I’m sure you could pick out dozens of literary traditions in India and Pakistan better than I. Part of the point is that countries change over time and contain many peoples. They will change over your lifetime. Please don’t think of this as my piling on. It is a lifetime project. Think of this suggestion as a wish that you should have a long life filled with lots of interesting reading.
Hello! That actually sounds like a great idea. Yea, it might take longer in the grand scheme of things but it would be more beneficial and insightful experience. After my posting my video, a comment made me realize that reading for England, should also include something Irish, Scottish and welsh. So it for a lot of other places
Read Homer once and you can read no more. For all books else appear so mean, so poor. Verse will seem Prose. But still persist to read and Homer will be all the books you need. :) love your channel
