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After a year of wistfully browsing images of dream destinations from Travel and Leisure and Condé Nast Traveler, most of us are feeling the urge to pack up and run away to faraway lands.
As our eagerness grows, however, we still haven’t found ourselves in a world where international travel has once again been deemed safe. Be that as it may, we still have the opportunity to dream of future trips and fervently add destinations to our bucket list.
Until international travel is once again a reality, welcome to the next best thing: armchair travel. After spending a year watching movies, movies and even more movies, perhaps it’s time to kick back with a book instead and travel the world via the words of international novelists, memoirists and travel writers.
Upon reevaluating our bookshelves, many of us may likely find that the majority of the authors we’ve read hail from North America — leaving a cultural blind spot in our literary journeys. In Ann Morgan’s 2015 TED Talk, “My Year Reading a Book From Every Country in the World,” she describes what she calls “A Year of Reading the World,” also the name of her blog. After getting help and recommendations from people around the world, she put together a list of over 190 books from each of the world’s independent countries.
Below, I’ll share a few of my favorites from that list. Happy (armchair) traveling!
Comoros:
“A Girl Called Eel” by Ali Zami and translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins.
A story about a 17-year-old girl named Anguille, Morgan describes “A Girl Called Eel” as “narrated breathlessly and chaotically by the title character, the novel looks back on its protagonist’s life just as she is at the point of leaving it.” As you flip through the 271 pages, you’ll be transported to Comoros, a volcanic island off of East Africa, and become engulfed in the universally-known struggles of a young, headstrong girl taken down a fateful path after falling in love with an older man.
“A Girl Called Eel” is published by Jacaranda Books.
Fiji:
“Kava in the Blood” by Peter Thomson.
We can all admit we’ve dreamed of going to Fiji at least once in our lives — the secluded beaches and pristine, crystal-clear water is enough to get any homebody interested in vacation. A blend of political history focusing on the 1987 coup d’etat in Fiji and personal anecdotes, Peter Thomson’s “Kava in the Blood” shows a lesser-known side of this dream destination and gives a glimpse into the politics and daily lives of Fijians.
“Kava in the Blood” is published by Becklyn Publishing Group.
Iceland:
“Stone Tree” by Gyrðir Elíasson and translated by Victoria Cribb.
As described by one reader, “Stone Tree” by Gyrðir Elíasson is a “vivid and melancholy” collection of short fiction stories that follows various protagonists through slow-moving, dreamlike pursuits away from normal life. Focusing on unnamed narrators, the stories are set on “the lonely western shores of Iceland, among its vast mountain ranges and its barren lava fields,” according to Good Reads. Tales about frustration, Elíasson’s characters decide to take a break from the status quo and pressures of society to reflect on who they want to be moving forward – a theme which all of us can certainly relate to.
“Stone Tree” is published by Comma Press.
Israel:
“Blooms of Darkness” by Aharon Appelfeld and translated by Jeffrey M. Green.
Described by The Guardian as “one of the greatest writers of the age,” Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld wrote “Blooms of Darkness” in 2010, recognized as a haunting, heartbreaking story of Hugo, an 11-year-old Jew, hidden from the Nazis in a local brothel by his mother. Winner of the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, this Holocaust novel gives insight into the terror felt at the hands of Nazis and the power of love and compassion to withstand hate and suppression.
“Blooms of Darkness” is published by Schocken.
New Zealand:
“The Bone People” by Keri Hulme.
A powerful look into the intersection of indigenous and western culture, “The Bone People” is a complex novel bringing to light the age-old story of colonization and its modern-day impacts that still reverberate through New Zealand. Focusing on a character named Kerewin Holmes, part Māori and part European, the story shows the relationship between the old and the new cultures in New Zealand.
“The Bone People” is published by Penguin Books.
For the rest of Ann Morgan’s list of books from around the world, visit ayearofreadingtheworld.com/thelist.