Monday 5 November 2012

Books about Reunion & worldwide literature

[Updated April 2023]

A recent exchange with Ann Morgan, who's currently reading her way round the world, got me thinking about Reunion Island books in English. As far as I'm aware, with the exception of 'Bourbon Island 1730', the list I came up with contains only books that I have been written directly in English and not translated. In fact as far as I know there are no English translations of books by well-known Reunionese authors like Daniel Vaxelaire or Axel Gauvin, although the latter's books have been translated into German.

Books about Reunion I haven't read myself (but which are all on my Bookmooch wish list!):
  • Reunion: An Island in Search of an Identity by Laurent Medea
  • Monsters and Revolutionaries: Colonial Family Romance and Metissage by Françoise Verges
  • Island Born Of Fire: Volcano Piton de la Fournaise by Dr Robert B. Trembly


Books I've read myself:
I've written reviews of all of the above books.

Also: Bonnes Vacances!: A Crazy Family Adventure in the French Territories by Rosie Millard is about a 4 month tour of the DOM-TOMs Rosie made with her husband and four young children to make a documentary series for the Travel Channel ("Croissants in the Jungle"). Its final chapter covers Réunion (briefly); see my review of the book here.

In the introduction I mentioned Ann Morgan who is currently reading her way around as many of the globe’s 196 independent countries as she can, sampling one book from every nation. (She's also recently included a Rest of The World wildcard section, hence our exchange about Reunion Island). However as she asked herself: what counts as a story? Is it by a person born in that place? Is it written in the country? Can it be about another nation state? While in some respects she's still answering that question she had to lay down her terms and so decided to limit herself to all narratives that could be read to full effect by one reader on their own e.g. memoirs, novels, short stories, novellas, biographies, narrative poems and reportage, but not non-narrative poetry and plays.

It got me wondering about which countries I'd already read literature from, and after a quick tour of my bookshelves (and my memory!) this is the (non-exhaustive) list I came up with, in English and French:



  • Brazil - Rouge Brésil [Brazil Red] - Jean-Christophe Rufin [Setting; Author is French]
  • Burma - The Piano Tuner - Daniel Mason [Setting; Author is British]
  • Cameroon - La saison de l'ombre - Léonora Miano [Author/Setting]
  • Canada - Where White Horses Gallop - Beatrice McNeil [Author/Setting]
  • Central African Republic - Princesse aux Pieds Nu - Evelyne Durieux [Author/Setting]
  • Chile - Ten Women by Marcela Serrano (translated by Beth Fowler) [Author/Setting]

  • China - Leaving Mother Lake: A Childhood at the Edge of the World - Yang Erche Namu [Author/Setting]
  • Croatia - Girl at War - Sara Nović [Setting; Author is US-born but of Croatian origin] [added August 2022]
  • Czech Republic - L'Insoutenable légèreté de l'être [The Unbearable Lightness of Being] - Milan Kundera [Author/Setting]
  • Cuba - Our Man In Havana - Graham Greene [Setting; Author was British]
  • Democratic Republic of Congo - The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver [Setting; Author is American]
  • Denmark (& Greenland) - Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow - Peter Høeg [Author/Setting]
  • Egypt - Woman at Point Zero - Nawal El Saadawi (translated by Sherif Hetata) [Author/Setting]
  • French Polynesia (Tahiti) - Breadfruit: A Novel - Célestine Hitiura Vaite [Author/Setting] (I read the French translation L'Arbre à Pain by Henri Theureau)
  • Germany - The Book Thief - Markus Zusak [Setting; Author is Australian]
  • Haiti - Island Beneath the Sea - Isabel Allende (translated by Margaret Sayers Peden) [Setting; Author is Chilean American]

  • Hawaii - Comfort Woman - Nora Okja Keller [Author/Setting]
  • Hungary - The White King - György Dragomán (translated by Paul Olchváry) [Author/Setting]
  • Iceland - L'homme du Lac [The Draining Lake] - Arnaldur Indridason (translated by Eric Boury) [Author/Setting]
  • India - A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry [Author/Setting]
  • Indonesia - Krakatoa - Simon Winchester [Setting; Author is British]
  • (Inner) Mongolia - Wolf Totem - Jiang Rong (translated by Howard Goldblatt) [Author/Setting]
  • Iran - Jamais Sans Ma Fille [Not Without My Daughter] - Betty Mahmoody [Author/Setting]
  • Ireland - Angela's Ashes - Franck McCourt [Author/Setting]
  • Israel - The Red Tent - Anita Diamant [Setting; Author is American]
  • Italy - The Baron in the Trees - Italo Calvino (translated by Archibald Colquhoun) [Author/Setting]
  • Jamaica (& Dominica) - Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [Author/Setting]
  • Japan - Out - Natsuo Kirino [Author/Setting]
  • Kerguelen - La Désolation - Appollo [Setting; Author is French]
  • Kiribati - Paradis [avant liquidation] - Julien Blanc-Gras [Setting; Author is French]




Samarcande


Notes:
  • I've arbitrarily excluded the UK, France and the USA as I've read so many books from these countries I'd have trouble choosing just one!
  • If I've read several books from a country I've generally just listed my favourite.
  • I've also taken liberties by listing some non-independent regions (e.g. Rodrigues, Hawaii, Kerguelen, Tibet, Tromelin).
  • I excluded some books (such as Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, or William Boyd's African novels) that take place in unidentified countries.
  • I also excluded books (such as Elie Wiesel's Night) whose action takes place in several countries.
  • If I've read a book in French but an English translation exists I've added the English title in brackets [].
  • I've included books not written by natives of the country in question.

My conclusions:

I have vast swathes of the planet where I haven't read any literature from, for example South America or the Pacific! Places like South East Asia or Central Asia are patchy too. Although I list Paul Coelho and Isabel Allende the books of theirs that I read were not set in their native countries. And despite living and travelling for three years in Asia I've mainly read Korean books (North and South) but very little from the many other countries we travelled to in the region. I need to broaden my horizons even more.

What about you? Do you enjoy reading books from other countries? Do you have any books to recommend? Is literature from your native (or adopted) country easy to find in English?

P.S. Here's the link to Ann Morgan's site: A Year Of Reading The World. Other reading around the world blogs I've come across are Reading the World and World Lit Up.

This post originally appeared on A Smart Translator's Reunion.

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