Read the World: An International Book List

Back in 2014, I posted about the Ten Books That Changed My Life, and there's actually something pretty unique about five of those ten books. Five of them are part of my internationally-minded book list, which I have dubbed "Read the World." This list has 197 entries--one for each country in the world--and contains either a book about that country, of someone traveling through that country, by a famous author from that country, or reflects a parody of that country. Some countries were really easy to fill in with book titles, but others took a lot more work. Do you know a good book about Comoros or by a Comoran author? Yeah, probably not.

I created the first iteration of the list back in 2007 with a friend in college after I read Tom Bissell's Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia, a travelogue of Bissell's adventures in Uzbekistan. Since then, the list has been updated and modified many times as books have been written or I've found other books to satisfy a country. In other cases, friends have recommended books to me that they thought could be used for a specific country. In each instance, I weighed whether I thought that the book met the criteria I laid out, and I tried my best to find books that stayed truest to the country the book was intended to represent. Overall, though, I also wanted to make sure I found a variety of types of books.

I have read 61 of the 197 books thusfar--of varying degrees of quality and recommendedness--and have five others on my bookshelf ready to read when I have some spare time. Here is my completed list, organized by region. If you have a recommendation for a country not listed below, please let me know so I can consider updating my list; I'm always looking for ways to keep the list fresh and interesting! Or, if you want the full list of 197 books, let me know that and I can send it to you!

Completed (Red); On My Bookshelf (Yellow); Still To Be Read/Open to Updating (White)

Americas

• The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo (Brazil)
• Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (Canada)
• Fidel Castro by Clive Foss (Cuba)
• One Day of Life by Manlio Argueta (El Salvador)
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (Peru)
• Rise to Rebellion by Jeffrey Shaara (United States)

East, South, and Central Asia

• Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan)
• Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey Into Bhutan by Jaime Zeppa (Bhutan)
• Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost (China)
• Wife by Bharati Mukherjee (India)
• Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (Indonesia)
• Shutting Out the Sun by Michael Zielenziger (Japan)
• Apples Are From Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared by Christopher Robbins (Kazakhstan)
• The Secret History of the Mongols by Francis Woodman Cleaves (Mongolia)
• The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux (Myanmar)
• Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (North Korea)
• In the Line of Fire by Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan)
• Tea Time With Terrorists by Mark Stephen Meadows (Sri Lanka)
• Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia by Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan)

Europe

• Broken April by Ismail Kadare (Albania)
• Andorra by Peter Cameron (Andorra)
• Nibelungenlied (Austria)
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (France)
• Stamping Grounds by Charlie Connelly (Liechtenstein)
• Playing the Moldovans at Tennis by Tony Hawkes (Moldova)
• Anything Considered by Peter Mayle (Monaco)
• The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank (Netherlands)
• A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen (Norway)
• Blindness by Jose Saramago (Portugal)
• Metro Stop Dostoevsky by Ingrid Bengis (Russia)
• Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (United Kingdom)

Middle East

• The Stranger by Albert Camus (Algeria)
• On the State of Egypt by Alaa Al Aswany (Egypt)
• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi (Iran)
• I'Jaam by Sinan Antoon (Iraq)
• In the Land of Invisible Women by Qanta Ahmed (Saudi Arabia)
• I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali (Yemen)

Oceania

• In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson (Australia)
• The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost (Kiribati)
• Movin' On: From the Mean Streets of Los Angeles to the Sandy Beaches of Micronesia by Joe Race (Micronesia)
• Getting Stoned With Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu by J. Maarten Troost (Vanuatu)

Sub-Saharan Africa

• No One Can Stop the Rain by Karin Moorhouse (Angola)
• Whatever You Do, Don't Run; True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide by Peter Allison (Botswana)
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
• The Train to Djibouti by Laura Kassa (Ethiopia)
• Onions Are My Husband by Gracia Clark (Ghana)
• The Anti-Politics Machine by James Ferguson (Lesotho)
• Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor by Harri Englund (Malawi)
• Little India: Diaspora, Time, and Ethnolinguistic Belonging in Hindu Mauritius by Patrick Eisenlohr (Mauritius)
• A Different Kind of War Story by Carolyn Nordstrom (Mozambique)
• Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
• We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Phillip Gourevitch (Rwanda)
• A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ismael Beah (Sierra Leone)
• The Pirates of Somalia by Jay Bahadur (Somalia)
• Emma's War by Deborah Scroggins (South Sudan)
• The Translator by Daoud Hari (Sudan)
• Highland Sanctuary: Environmental History in Tanzania's Usambara Mountains by Christopher Conte (Tanzania)
• An African in Greenland by Tete-Michel Kpomassie (Togo)
• The Price of Stones by Twesigye Jackson Kaguri (Uganda)
• The Lunda-Ndembu by James Pritchett (Zambia)
• The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing (Zimbabwe)

The Books I Have on My Bookshelf

• 33 Men by Jonathan Franklin (Chile)
• The Shadow of Kilimanjaro: On Foot Across East Africa by Rick Ridgeway (Kenya)
• Spirit of the Phoenix by Tim Llewellyn (Lebanon)
• Unfinished Revolution: Daniel Ortega and Nicaragua's Struggle for Liberation by Kenneth Morris (Nicaragua)
• Crescent and Star by Stephen Kinzer (Turkey)

And nearly forgot my happy video. So here it is, a beautiful piano cover of a pop song all over the radio these days: