It’s a crazy idea I know but I get them from time to time. I read a lot, getting through two or three books a week, sometimes more. At the time I was reading ‘The Call of the Toad’ by Gunter Grass, a German author when I wondered if it would be possible to read a book by an author from every country in the world.
There are 197 recognised countries in the world, so I am told and a quick search of the Internet gave me a list from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and everything in between. I then went through my reading history from the Lit and Phil, picking out authors with seemingly un-English names. I then went through a list of Everyman books as I had read a few of them and came up with my current position.
It turns out that I have read books from 29 countries from Albania, Ismail Kadare’s ‘The General of the Dead Army’ to the United States and Hermin Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’. Is that a good number or not? There are probably others that I haven’t come across yet and time will tell. Still, that leaves me with 168 countries to go for. At the rate I read that shouldn’t be too much of a problem… or will it.
The first issue I have come across is finding authors from each country. Again the Internet is a great help yet I haven’t heard of most of those listed and so am not sure if I will enjoy the books or not. The second issue is finding where to get the books from. The Lit and Phil has mostly european or anglophonic books and so I have tried local bookshops. The best source turns out to be Ebay. The third issue is finding a book in English. Some are available in other European languages and it may be that I have to try to read them in French, Spanish or Dutch. That’s going to add some time to the quest! This will be a real issue with some of the smaller countries. I am thinking of Tuvalu!
Anyway, I am off and running, having ordered three books from Ebay: ‘Zaïd le mendiant’ by Maya Arriz-Tamza (Algeria); ‘If I Had the Wings’ by Helen Klonaris (Bahamas); ‘In The Shadow Of The Banyan’ by Vaddey Ratner (Cambodia).
I certainly like a challenge.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 