Chile

La casa de los espíritus
Isabelle Allende

A family saga charting the Trueba family across contemporary Chilean history. Allende is the niece of former president, Salvador Allende, and this closeness to Chile's turbulent political history had a clear impact on the book and its characters. The story follows family patriarch, Esteban, from childhood at the turn of the past century through the turmoil of the country's leftist and rightist clashes and the CIA-backed coup that overthrew her real-life uncle and the president in her novel.

Her family became a target under the Pinochet regime, and Allende eventually was forced into exile for 13 years. One might imagine that this kind of experience would infuse the writing with rancour towards those that had attacked her and her family, but instead the pointlessness of ideological clashes was was of the main themes I took away from the book. 

Available in translation as The House of Spirits, and was adapted for a star-studded film of the same name in 1993 with Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Wynona Ryder, and Antonio Banderas.

France

Pars vite et reviens tard
Fred Vargas

A hard-boiled detective thriller of the kind I usually don't go for, but I was home one day with nothing to read and found this on the bookshelf. One of my flatmate's former flatmates had left it behind and I was in need of something to fill my long Parisian métro rides to get to uni.

I found the story a bit hard to get into at first. I admit this may have to do with my lack of French police detective vocabulary and vocabulary about the Plague – two of the plot's main focuses. Once I went to the trouble of hauling out my Larousse an learning some new words and arcane French slang, I did get into the books intrigue and well-developed cast of characters. In a way that seemed to me very realistically French, the characters are all connected to a small market square in Paris' 14th arrondissement. This is probably the city's least remarkable arrondissement, and I think this anonymity of place made the story more relatable. 

The book was translated as Have Mercy on Us All in 2003 by David Bellos (French title literally translates to "Leave quickly and come back late"). It was also made into a French film in 2007.

South Korea

Black Flower, Kim Young-ha
검은 꽃, 김영하

Part history lesson and part love story, Black Flower takes place during an almost forgotten moment in history when a group of Koreans sailed to Mexico to start a new life in the early days of the twentieth century.

Based on actual events, I stumbled across this fascinating story one day while passing time at bookstore. It follows a group of Koreans seeking to leave the Korean Empire as it collapses. They board a ship to Mexico, hoping for a better life, but are trapped in indentured servitude as hacienda labourers. 

Black Flower succeeds as a window onto this otherwise unknown moment in history. I found the story otherwise tending to veer into over-long history lessons with details and explanations of the Mexican Revolution or the hacienda system. These provide context, but distract from the story, which is ultimately left not devoting enough to developing the its main characters.

I would certainly be keen to add another South Korean book to the roster, to see if my sticking points are to unique to Black Flower or rather aspects of Korean literature that I'm not familiar with.