โA reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.โ โ George R.R. Martin
Introduction – or Rather “Once Upon A Time”
Once upon a time, there was a blogger, poet, and English undergrad named Nissie-Grace, who spent her evenings surfing the net – as all real princesses did. Suddenly she stumbled upon a video which presented her with a challenge – no, a quest. She was to read a few books from every continent to widen her knowledge of world literature.
Lol okay enough of that literary trope. However, a) have you ever thought about what the phrase “once upon a time” actually means? and b) welcome to the blog post and page about the Seaofknees International Reading Challenge 2020 inspired by Ann Morgan.
(The answer to a) is a bit nerdy and will only turn on the real linguists amongst us so click http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-onc1.htm for more info.)
But anyways, back in 2017, I saw the TED talk above in my suggestions of videos I should watch. I watched it and was kinda surprised by several things a) how open and honest Ann Morgan was about her ignorance b) how little I knew about world literature and how small my reading pool was and finally c) how open the rest of the world were to helping her achieve this task. Now I tried to read the world in 2019 but I didn’t take it seriously and also just didn’t have the time. But we learn from our mistakes around here. So what I’ve chosen to do, is narrow it down to 5/6 countries per continent this year and keep doing the same each year until I’ve read the world. This whole post is an introduction to my journey of a year reading the world but on a much smaller scale because:
The Process
So to begin, I put each continent in a random generator and it came up with the countries. Then I asked twitter to help me to find books from those countries which was absolutely useless but that’s okay ๐ we tried. I ended up deciding to use Ann Morgan’s book list to start with and then take a lot of time to research the countries that I couldn’t find in her list but also just create my own list as I get used to reading foreign texts. Here’s what we have so far:
Asia
- Thailand ๐น๐ญ Chart Korbjitti, translated from the Thai by Marcel Barang – Time: a Thai Novel
- Singapore ๐ธ๐ฌ Su-Chen Christine Lim – Fistful of Colours
- Qatar ๐ถ๐ฆ Abdul Aziz Al Mahmoud, translated from the Arabic by Amira Nowaira – The Corsair
- Philippines ๐ต๐ญ Marivi Soliven – The Mango Bride
- Brunei ๐ง๐ณ Christopher Sun (aka Sun Tze Yun) – Four Kings
- Hong Kong ๐ญ๐ฐ No text yet
Africa
- Congo ๐จ๐ฌ Emmanuel Dongala – Johnny Mad Dog
- Namibia ๐ณ๐ฆ Neshani Andreas – The Purple Violet of Oshaantu
- Cameroon ๐จ๐ฒ Mongo Beti – La Pauvre Christ de Bomba (The Poor Christ of Bomba)
- Morocco ๐ฒ๐ฆ Tahar Ben Jelloun – The Sand Child
- Eritrea ๐ช๐ท Sulaiman Addonia – The Comsequences of Love
Europe
- Spain ๐ช๐ธ Javier Cercas (trans. Anne McClean) – The Anatomy of a Moment
- Netherlands ๐ณ๐ฑ Harry Mulisch – The Discovery of Heaven
- Andorra ๐ฆ๐ฉ Albert Salvadรณ – The Teacher of Cheops
- Iceland ๐ฎ๐ธ Arnaldur Indridason – Jar City
- Romania ๐ท๐ด Herta Mรผller – The Passport
Oceania
- Papua New Guinea ๐ต๐ฌ Russell Soaba – Maiba
- Wallis and Futuna ๐ผ๐ซ No text yet
- Kiribati ๐ฐ๐ฎ Teweiariki Teaero – Waa in Storms
- French Polynesia ๐ต๐ซ No text yet
- Marshall Islands ๐ฒ๐ญ Ed Daniel Kelin – Marshall Islands Legends and Stories
- Samoa ๐ผ๐ธ Lani Wendt Young – Telesa: The Covenant Keeper
South America
- Argentina ๐ฆ๐ท Martin Kohan – Seconds Out
- Venezuela ๐ป๐ช Federico Vegasโ – Falke (yet to find translated version)
- Chile ๐จ๐ฑ Alejandro Zambra – The Private Lives of Trees
- French Guiana ๐ฌ๐ซ No text yet
- Uruguay ๐บ๐พ Horacio Quiroga – The Decapitated Chicken
- Falkland Islands ๐ซ๐ฐ No text yet
North America
- Belize ๐ง๐ฟ Zoila Ellis – On Heroes Lizards and Passion
- United States ๐บ๐ธ literally anything? (I’ll put one in later sksksk)
- Saint Kitts and Nevis ๐ฐ๐ณ Bertram Roach – Only God Can Make a Tree
- Jamaica ๐ฏ๐ฒ Brian Meeks – Paint the Town Red
- Saint Vincent and The Grenadines ๐ป๐จ H. Nigel Thomas – Behind the Face of Winter
- Dominican Republic ๐ฉ๐ด Junot Diaz – The Wonderous Brief Life of Oscar Wao
About the list…
Now most of these I found from Ann Morgan’s “A year of reading the world” blog https://ayearofreadingtheworld.com/thelist/. But this is just a basic list to get me off my feet since I’ve never tried this before. As I do go on, however, I hope to be able to add texts of my own, from my own research but also with your help (whoever’s willing). The countries that have “No text yet” besides them are countries that Morgan didn’t do which already provides me with a bit of a challenge.
Next Steps
The next steps for me are obviously to order some of the books and get reading. But also to do loads more research around each of the countries, especially those that I’d never heard of before or have no basic information about.
I’ll be blogging about as many texts as I possibly can and will dedicate a whole page on my blog just to this reading challenge. I’ll also add the specifics like where to buy each book and how hard/easy it was to find as well as how challenging it may or may not be to get a hold of translated copies.
I hope some of you will join me on this journey – I’m nervous but inspired and excited to widen my knowledge of world literature.
So keep an eye on my blog and wish me luck. I’ve got 34 books to buy and read and blog about this year ๐๐ค๐พand at some point I really do hope to get in contact with Ann Morgan… we’ll see ๐
Good read girl and good luck with the challenge โค๏ธHopefully you can review some of the books as well
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Thank you so much for taking the time to read. And thank you ๐ญโค๏ธ Iโll keep you all updated x
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The reason that Ann doesn’t have books from some of these countries is that they are not “countries”. Several are part of France – French Polynesia, French Guiana, Wallis and Futuna (in the same way that Hawaii is part of the United States). Hong Kong was a British territory but is now part of China. Falkland Islands is British although Argentina also claims these islands (they had a war over it!). That doesn’t mean you can’t read a book from each if you want to, but you will find it difficult. For instance Wallis and Futuna has a population of about 11,500. Probably not many of them published authors!
I’m about half way through this challenge myself and I’ve tried to find different books to those Ann read – after all, there have been quite a few published since she completed it in 2012 – so if you would like more ideas you could see my blog (I have linked it). There is a page for “countries” where I link all the reviews.
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Hi Catherine,
Thank you so much for adding this insight. I really appreciate it. I will definitely still try to find something even if itโs just an essay or article.
I look forward to looking into your journey also ๐๐พ
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