Read Around the World, A Great Journey

Read Around the World is a reading project for readers who want to explore the world with books. Read Around the World is also a great project if you desire to broaden your horizons, just by sitting in a chair and reading. What you have to do is to read at least one book by an author from each country. Simple and fun as that!

In the meantime, you don’t have to limit yourself to a time frame. And since I’m sure you have lots of books to read, you don’t have to overload your reading schedule with various countries. I want Read Around the World project to be fun and without pressure. All you need to do is make up your mind and open up enough shelf space for your new books. And you are almost ready to read around the world.

Let’s face it; our bookshelves are full of authors from the same countries; thus, they are boring. Don’t you think? After all, if you had the chance, would you visit the same land over and over again? I hope not! Wouldn’t it be exciting to see somewhere else? Experiencing a culture for the first time is like nothing else. So why not read around the world? Given these points, doesn’t it sound exciting?

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination and the journey. They are home.”

Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life

I’ll make Read Around the World reading challenge a neverending one, and contribute to this list as long as I blog. If you want to join me, visit this blog every once in a while and share your thoughts. That’s all! In short, I hope you can find great books and share your favourites with me as well. 

Like everyone else, I got the read around the world idea from Ann Morgan from A Year of Reading the World. Thanks to her, curious readers like me have a comprehensive reading list and thus a fun reading challenge to complete. She has made it possible for everyone to follow this perfect idea to read around the world. What a great lady!

Looking for inspiration?

If you need inspiration for Read Around the World project, I would recommend English PEN’s World Bookshelf and also The List from A Year of Reading the World. These are excellent sources for translated books and thus will make you want to read around the world a lot more! 

Read Around the World Bookshelf

I thought it would be much easier to categorise read around the world shelf by location. So, you’ll find the countries under continents and various read around the world books and countries.

EUROPE

Albania

• Broken April – Ismail Kadare

Andorra

Austria

• The Tobacconist – Robert Seethaler
• A Woman in the Polar Night – Christiane Ritter
• Amok – Stefan Zweig
• A Glove Shop in Vienna – Eva Ibbotson
• The Day My Grandfather Was a Hero – Paulus Hochgatterer

Belarus

• Red Crosses – Sasha Filipenko

Belgium

• Cosmétique de l’ennemi – Amélie Nothomb

Bosnia & Herzegovina

Bulgaria

• Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti

Croatia

• Thank You for Not Reading – Dubravka Ugresic

Cyprus

Czech Republic

• All My Cats – Bohumil Hrabal

Denmark

• Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Hoeg

Estonia

Finland

• The Year of the Hare – Arto Paasilinna
• The Summer Book – Tove Jansson

France

• That Mad Ache – Françoise Sagan
• The President’s Hat – Antoine Laurain
• The Man Who Risked It All – Laurent Gounelle
• Fanfan – Alexandre Jardin
• Nagasaki – Eric Faye
• Suicide – Edouard Leve
• The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
• The Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
• Fresh Water for Flowers – Valérie Perrin

Germany

• The Train Was on Time – Heinrich Böll
• The Art of Hearing Heartbeats – Jan-Philipp Sendker
• A Well-Tempered Heart – Jan-Philipp Sendker
• Steppenwolf – Hermann Hesse
• Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse
• The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
• Death in Venice – Thomas Mann

Greece

• Zorba the Greek – Nikos Kazantzakis
• Three Summers – Margarita Liberaki

Hungary

• Yesterday – Agota Kristof
• Seiobo There Below – László Krasznahorkai
• Esther’s Inheritance – Sándor Márai
• Opium and Other Stories – Géza Csáth
• The Door – Magda Szabó

Iceland

• Magma – Thora Hjörleifsdóttir

Ireland

• Academy Street – Mary Costello
• Love and Summer – William Trevor
• Molloy – Samuel Beckett
• The Seven Sisters – Lucinda Riley

Italy

• If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller – Italo Calvino
• Morning Sea – Margaret Mazzantini
• The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
• Pereira Maintains – Antonio Tabucchi
• The Day of the Owl – Leonardo Sciascia
• Among Women Only – Cesare Pavese
• My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante
• The Story of a New Name – Elena Ferrante
• Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay – Elena Ferrante
• The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
• Silk – Alessandro Baricco
• Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo

Latvia

Liechtenstein

Lithuania

• Between Shades Of Gray – Ruta Sepetys

Luxembourg

Malta

Moldova

Monaco

Montenegro 

• The Son – Andrej Nikolaidis

Netherlands

• Mokusei A Love Story – Cees Nooteboom
• The Courage Consort – Michel Faber

Macedonia

Norway

• The Left Bank Gang – Jason
• The Faster I Walk the Smaller I am – Kjersti A. Skomsvold
• Morning and Evening – Jon Fosse

Poland

• Being There – Jerzy Kosinski
• Primeval and Other Times – Olga Tokarczuk
• Things I Didn’t Throw Out – Marcin Wicha

Portugal

• Blindness – Jose Saramago
• Seeing – Jose Saramago
• The Book of Disquiet – Fernando Pessoa

Romania

Russia

• We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
• The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
• First Love – Ivan Turgenev
• Poor Folk – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• A Hero of Our Time – Mikhail Lermontov
• The Light and the Dark – Mikhail Shishkin

San Marino

Serbia

• The Tiger’s Wife – Téa Obreht
• Ekaterini – Marija Kneževic

Slovakia

• Fleeting Snow – Pavel Vilikovsky

Slovenia

Spain

• Mist – Miguel de Unamuno

Sweden

• Jagannath – Karin Tidbeck

Switzerland

• Sweet Days of Discipline – Fleur Jaeggy
• Jakob von Gunten – Robert Walser
• Homo Faber – Max Frisch

Turkey

• Dear Shameless Death – Latife Tekin
• Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Sevgi Ozdamar
• The Time Regulation Institute – Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar
• My Name Is Red – Orhan Pamuk
• Memed My Hawk – Yashar Kemal
• Noontime In Yenişehir – Sevgi Soysal
• Aylin – Ayse Kulin
• The Highly Unreliable Account of the History of a Madhouse – Ayfer Tunç

Ukraine

• A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian – Marina Lewycka

United Kingdom

• The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles 
• Hotel Du Lac – Anita Brookner
• The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – Alexander M. Smith
• The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
• Letters from Father Christmas – J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
• Lord of the Flies – William Golding
• Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
• The Djinn In The Nightingale’s Eye – A. S. Byatt
• The Light That Failed – Rudyard Kipling
• Madame Sousatzka – Bernice Rubens
• Far From the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
• The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
• On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
• And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
• Excellent Women – Barbara Pym
• High-Rise – J. G. Ballard

ASIA

Afghanistan

• The Patience Stone – Atiq Rahimi

Armenia

• Three Apples Fell from the Sky – Narine Abgaryan

Azerbaijan

• Days in the Caucasus – Banine

Bahrain

Bangladesh

Bhutan

• Bhutanese Tales of the Yeti – Kunzang Choden

Brunei

Cambodia

China

• The Noodle Maker – Ma Jian
• Love in a Fallen City – Eileen Chang
• Girl in Translation – Jean Kwok
• The Joy Luck Club – Amy Tan
• American Born Chinese – Gene Luen Yang
• Red Sorghum – Mo Yan
• To Live – Yu Hua
• Interior Chinatown – Charles Yu
• The Years Months Days: 2 Novellas – Yan Lianke

Georgia

• The Eighth Life – Nino Haratischvili

India

• The Lowland – Jhumpa Lahiri
• Afternoon Raag – Amit Chaudhuri
• The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

Indonesia

Iran

• The Cypress Tree – Kamin Mohammadi
• The Blind Owl – Sadegh Hedayat

Iraq

Israel

• The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God – Etgar Keret
• Three Envelopes – Nir Hezroni

Japan

I love Japanese literature a lot, so this country has its own page here: Japanese Literature, A Literary Journey.

Jordan

Kazakhstan

Kuwait

Kyrgyzstan

Laos

Lebanon

• An Unnecessary Woman – Rabih Alameddine

Malaysia

• Black Water Sister – Zen Cho
• The Garden of Evening Mists – Tan Twan Eng

Maldives

Mongolia

Myanmar

Nepal

North Korea

Oman

Pakistan

• The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mohsin Hamid

Philippines

Qatar

Saudi Arabia

Singapore

• How We Disappeared – Jing-Jing Lee

South Korea

• The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly – Sun-mi Hwang
• Yeoyu – New Voices from Korea
• I Have the Right to Destroy Myself – Kim Young-Ha
• The Vegetarian – Han Kang

Sri Lanka

Syria

• Farewell Damascus – Ghada Samman

Tajikistan

Thailand

East Timor

Turkmenistan

United Arab Emirates

Uzbekistan

Viet Nam

• The Boat – Nam Le

Yemen

AFRICA

Algeria

• The Swallows of Kabul – Yasmina Khadra

Angola

• The Book of Chameleons – José Eduardo Agualusa

Benin

Botswana

Burkina Faso

Burundi

Cabo Verde

Cameroon

Central African Rep.

Chad

Comoros

Congo, Dem. Rep.

Congo, Repub. of the

Cote d’Ivoire

Djibouti

Egypt

Equatorial Guinea

• By Night the Mountain Burns – Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel

Eritrea

Eswatini

Ethiopia

Gabon

Gambia, The

Ghana

Guinea

Guinea-Bissau

Kenya

Lesotho

Liberia

Libya

• Chewing Gum – Mansour Bushnaf

Madagascar

Malawi

Mali

Mauritania

Mauritius

• Desert – Le Clezio

Morocco

Mozambique

Namibia

Niger

Nigeria

• Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Everyday Is for the Thief – Teju Cole

Rwanda

Sao Tome & Principe

Senegal

• So Long A Letter – Mariama Ba

Seychelles

Sierra Leone

Somalia

South Africa

• July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
• Scenes from Provincial Life – J.M. Coetzee

South Sudan

Sudan

Tanzania

Togo

Tunisia

Uganda

Zambia

Zimbabwe

NORTH AMERICA

Antigua & Barbuda

• Annie John – Jamaica Kincaid

Bahamas, The

Barbados

Belize

Canada

• Room – Emma Donoghue
• Last Night in Montreal – Emily St. John Mandel
• Life of Pi – Yann Martel
• The Imperfectionists – Tom Rachman
• Greenwood – Michael Christie

Costa Rica

Cuba

• Before Night Falls – Reinaldo Arenas
• Havana Year Zero – Karla Suarez

Dominica

• Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys

Dominican Republic

• This Is How You Lose Her – Junot Diaz

El Salvador

• Senselessness – Horacio Castellanos Moya

Grenada

Guatemala

• Trout, Belly Up – Rodrigo Fuentes

Haiti

Honduras

Jamaica

Mexico

• The People of Paper – Salvador Plascencia
• Loop – Brenda Lozano
• Faces in the Crowd – Valeria Luiselli
• The Murmur of Bees – Sofía Segovia
• Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel

Nicaragua

• Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand – Gioconda Belli

Panama

• Come Together Fall Apart – Cristina Henriquez

Saint Kitts & Nevis

Saint Lucia

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Trinidad & Tobago

• Miguel Street – V. S. Naipaul

United States

• American Wife – Curtis Sittenfeld 
• Invisible – Paul Auster
• Ragtime – E. L. Doctorow
• The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
• Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
• Shibumi – Trevanian
• A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
• The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
• The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
• Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
• To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
• Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
• The Stars My Destination – Alfred Bester

SOUTH AMERICA

Argentina

• On Heroes and Tombs – Ernesto Sabato
• Mouthful of Birds – Samanta Schweblin
• Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
• Fate – Jorge Consiglio
• An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter – César Aira
• The President’s Room – Ricardo Romero
• The House of Paper – Carlos Maria Dominguez

Bolivia

• Affections – Rodrigo Hasbún

Brazil

• Manuscript Found in Accra – Paulo Coelho
• The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector

Chile

• Distant Star – Roberto Bolaño
• The Old Man Who Read Love Stories – Luis Sepúlveda
• Bonsai – Alejandro Zambra
• The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly – Luis Sepúlveda
• Of Love and Shadows – Isabel Allende

Colombia

• Memories of My Melancholy Whores – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Ecuador

• Poso Wells – Gabriela Alemán

Guyana

Paraguay

Peru

Suriname

Uruguay

• Older Brother – Daniel Mella

Venezuela

• The Sickness – Alberto Barrera Tyszka

AUSTRALIA AND OCEANIA

Australia

• The Dry – Jane Harper

Fiji

Kiribati

Marshall Islands

Micronesia, Fed. St.

Nauru

New Zealand

• The Garden Party and Other Stories – Katherine Mansfield

Palau

Papua New Guinea

Samoa

Solomon Islands

Tonga

Tuvalu

Vanuatu

Are you one of those readers that want to explore the world from the comfort of their chairs? You are in the right place. Read Around the World reading project is great for armchair travellers. Please share with me your favourite books from your read around the world project.