Read Around the World

Read Around the World is a reading project for the readers who want to explore the world with books. Iturugu 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. All you need to do is to make up your mind and also open up enough shelf space for your new books.

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 the whole 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 this 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. What a great lady!

Looking for inspiration?

If you need inspiration, 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 more! 

Read Around the World Bookshelf

EUROPE

Albania

Andorra

Austria

• The Tobacconist – Robert Seethaler
• A Woman in the Polar Night – Christiane Ritter
• Amok – Stefan Zweig

Belarus

Belgium

Bosnia & Herzegovina

Bulgaria

• Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti

Croatia

Cyprus

Czech Republic

• All My Cats – Bohumil Hrabal

Denmark

Estonia

Finland

France

• That Mad Ache – Françoise Sagan
• The President’s Hat – Antoine Laurain
• Vintage 1954 – Antoine Laurain
• The Man Who Risked It All – Laurent Gounelle
• Fanfan – Alexandre Jardin

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

Greece

Hungary

• Yesterday – Agota Kristof
• Esther’s Inheritance – Sándor Márai

Iceland

Ireland

• Academy Street – Mary Costello
• Love and Summer – William Trevor

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

Latvia

Liechtenstein

Lithuania

Luxembourg

Malta

Moldova

Monaco

Montenegro 

• The Son – Andrej Nikolaidis

Netherlands

Macedonia

Norway

• The Left Bank Gang – Jason

Poland

• Being There – Jerzy Kosinski

Portugal

• 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

San Marino

Serbia

• The Tiger’s Wife – Téa Obreht

Slovakia

Slovenia

Spain

• Mist – Miguel de Unamuno

Sweden

Switzerland

• Sweet Days of Discipline – Fleur Jaeggy
• Jakob von Gunten – Robert Walser

Turkey

• My Name Is Red – Orhan Pamuk
• Noontime In Yenişehir – Sevgi Soysal
• Benice – Metin Karayaka

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
• Transcription – Kate Atkinson
• 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
• The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder – J. Ironmonger
• 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

ASIA

Afghanistan

Armenia

Azerbaijan

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

Georgia

• The Eighth Life – Nino Haratischvili

India

Indonesia

Iran

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

Iraq

Israel

• The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God – Etgar Keret

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

Malaysia

Maldives

Mongolia

Myanmar

Nepal

North Korea

Oman

Pakistan

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

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

Angola

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

Eritrea

Eswatini

Ethiopia

Gabon

Gambia, The

Ghana

Guinea

Guinea-Bissau

Kenya

Lesotho

Liberia

Libya

• Chewing Gum – Mansour Bushnaf

Madagascar

Malawi

Mali

Mauritania

Mauritius

Morocco

Mozambique

Namibia

Niger

Nigeria

Rwanda

Sao Tome & Principe

Senegal

Seychelles

Sierra Leone

Somalia

South Africa

South Sudan

Sudan

Tanzania

Togo

Tunisia

Uganda

Zambia

Zimbabwe

NORTH AMERICA

Antigua & Barbuda

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

Dominica

• Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys

Dominican Republic

El Salvador

Grenada

Guatemala

• Trout, Belly Up – Rodrigo Fuentes

Haiti

Honduras

Jamaica

Mexico

• The People of Paper – Salvador Plascencia
• Loop – Brenda Lozano

Nicaragua

• Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand – Gioconda Belli

Panama

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
• The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
• Shopgirl – Steve Martin
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
• The Accidental Tourist – Anne Tyler
• A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
• The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
• Good Omens – Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
• A Walk Across the Sun – Corban Addison
• The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
• Getting Even – Woody Allen
• What Is the What – Dave Eggers
• Say Her Name – Francisco Goldman
• The Family Fang – Kevin Wilson
• The Manual of Detection – Jedediah Berry
• Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
• To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
• Caribou Island – David Vann
• Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
• The Borrower – Rebecca Makkai
• The Oracle of Stamboul – Michael David Lukas
• The Touchstone – Edith Wharton
• The Dud Avocado – Elaine Dundy
• Some Things That Meant the World to Me – Joshua Mohr
• Fledgling – Octavia E. Butler

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

Bolivia

Brazil

• Manuscript Found in Accra – Paulo Coelho

Chile

• Distant Star – Roberto Bolaño
• The Old Man Who Read Love Stories – Luis Sepúlveda
• Bonsai – Alejandro Zambra

Colombia

Ecuador

Guyana

Paraguay

Peru

Suriname

Uruguay

• Older Brother – Daniel Mella

Venezuela

AUSTRALIA AND OCEANIA

Australia

Fiji

Kiribati

Marshall Islands

Micronesia, Fed. St.

Nauru

New Zealand

Palau

Papua New Guinea

Samoa

Solomon Islands

Tonga

Tuvalu

Vanuatu