Afghanistan

The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini

I just watched the film for the book a few days ago and I was reminded of how dreadfully disheartened I was reading this book. While there is redemption and hope, mostly there is a full-plate serving of sadness reading The Kite Runner. – Not that that should put any off reading it; life is sometimes sad and this story beautifully told.

As I had read this quite a number of years ago now, when it first came out on the bestseller list, I was intrigued to see what Ann Morgan had come up with for her Afghan entry. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she had a hard time escaping the ubiquitousness of Hosseini in Afghani writing. Despite a native narrative tradition stretching back a thousand years, and a daily presence in news stories for more than a decade, Afghanistan has always been something of literary hermit kingdom. With the success of Hosseini's writing, hopefully more avenues will open for new Afghan writers to emerge in the future.

Sri Lanka

Cinnamon Gardens
Shyam Selvadurai

Selvadurai is a Sri Lankan–Canadian author whose first book, Funny Boy, won a slew of awards, including the Books in Canada First Novel Award. It's coming-of-age story set in Sri Lanka where Selvadurai grew up. As with any hyphenated writer who's lived in more than one country, I faced the question of where I should considered them to be "from". Selvadurai was born to a Sinhalese mother and a Tamil father, which led his family to emigrate to Canada during the interethnic tension of the Sri Lankan civil war when Selvadurai was 19. Since Selvadurai spent his formative years in Sri Lanka, and sets his novels all there, I figure he is a safe bet for my Sri Lanka entry. I would, however, be particularly interested in reading some authors writing in the post-civil-war period to understand how the country has been affected by that dreadful conflict.

Funny Boy is set in the run-up to this turbulent period, which is when my family also lived in Sri Lanka. As such, it had a particular resonance for me that I didn't find in Cinnamon Gardens, which is set in the high-society world of colonial-era Sri Lanka in the 1920s. Cinnamon Gardens traces the story of two relatives struggling to find their way in the genteel but overbearing manners and social graces of the period, à la Jane Austen, which I've since learned was an inspiration for the book.

Selvadurai has a new book, The Hungry Ghosts, which follows on with many of the same themes of sexuality, ethnicity, and identity in Sri Lanka. Something to pick up for my upcoming Chinese New Year trip to the Sri Lankan beach?

Lebanon

Beirut Blues, Hanan al-Shaykh
حنان الشيخ  بريد بيروت

I really had the most difficult time remembering the title of this book when I was compiling the list of countries I'd already read. I picked up this book by chance off a bookshop shelf when I was at uni, drawn by the look of the cover, with its airmail envelop chevrons and stamps. – I can confirm that it is quite difficult to find a book when all you remember is the cover!

Eventually, with a bit of applied thought, I remembered that the author was a woman, which narrowed down the field of possibilities rather considerably. Hanan al-Shaykh was born into a conservative Muslim family; this would influence her writing considerably which often focuses on the place women in Arab society.

Beirut Blues, translated into English by Catherine Cobham, is written as a series of letters – whence the cover which so captivated me – by a woman struggling to make sense of her life and the world in war-ravaged Beirut. She must choose between staying in Beirut's dangers and frustrations, or emigrating and leaving the country she loves behind.

Ireland

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde

I read The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's only novel, when I was in university and quite enamoured with someone who very much brought to mind the protagonist of this story.

But that was many moons ago now. I remember having difficulty imagining how or why this book was considered so salacious when it was first published. There are only vague hints of ambiguous allusions of faint whispers of anything even mildly indecorous. Those Victorians sensibilities were so easily aggrieved; I doubt I would do very well with such prudish bunch!

I've actually read Irish author Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes much more recently. What a depressing story! So depressing, in fact, that it's disheartening to think that it's a memoir, with real suffering characters, rather than a work of fiction. For my reading the world project, I'd like to focus on fiction where possible, a rule that Ann Morgan had to bend a few times when nothing else was available. Given Ireland's long literary history, I'll stick with uni-times backtracking to The Picture of Dorian Gray for the time being.

Sweden

The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden, Jonas Jonasson
Analfabeten som kunde räkna

I spent my New Year in Sweden this year with a group of Swedish friends I knew from Singapore who had moved back to their charming and snowy country. And, naturally, I wanted a book by a Swedish author to accompany me on my travels. 

Despite the fact that Sweden has a long literary history and a well-read population, I actually had quite a lot of trouble finding a Swedish book to read. Not that there aren't many Swedish authors, of course. In my searches, I found dozens and dozens of Swedish thrillers and hard-boiled detective stories. Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy comes to mind, but there are heaps of others. The genre isn't really my cup of tea, so I kept searching. Ann Morgan's choice, Montecore by Jonas Hassen Khemiri, seemed interesting – an award-winning book exploring the Swedish immigrant experience – but wasn't available here in Singapore from either bookshop or my usual online retailer.

My searching continued and eventually I came across Jonas Jonasson. I'm really surprised (by my poor searching skills?) that it took so long to come up with his name. Jonasson is the author of best-selling The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, which is now being made into a movie. I'd heard of that book, of course, but had no idea that the author was Swedish!

The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden is a quirky, character-driven story that's hard not to like. I found myself chuckling along as I read about the exploits of Nombeko Mayeki, an illiterate orphan from Soweto who changes the fate of Sweden in the most whimsical and picaresque way. Tack så mycket, Sweden, from throwing this one my way!

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.

New Zealand

Once Were Warriors
Alan Duff

Following on the heels of my leisurely stroll down Thai memory lane with Four Reigns, comes Once Were Warriors, an emotional, unblinking look at the caustic life of Māori living in the an urban ghetto. This is a tough read through a desperate cycle of poverty, alcoholism, abuse, hopelessness, and violence in all its forms for the Heke Family living in the grim coucil estate of Pine Block. 

The author, part Māori himself, doesn't take the easy way out of blaming Pākehā (Europeans) for Māori problems, but instead creates a complex picture of people who can be their own worst enemy, but have also suffered under the long-term effects of colonialism. Alan Duff painful's indictment shines a spotlight on a group at the rock bottom in the hopes of cultural turnaround through a reconnection with old traditions and practices. 

The sobering 1990 book was made into a 1994 film that resounded through New Zealand society and is felt to have had an impact on reshaping attitudes and the relationships between Māori and Pākehā.

Thailand

Four Reigns, Kukrit Pramoj
สี่แผ่นดิน, คึกฤทธิ์ ปราโมช

A sprawling walk down memory lane, as Kukrit Pramoj, scholar, politician, and one-time Prime Minister of Thailand, recounts the lives of a family of minor courtiers over the reigns of four Thai kings (whence the title). 

In its early parts, I found the book particularly captivating as Pramoj describes the ins and outs of life in a Bangkok now long unknown to us. The Thai court and its customs, but also the everyday life of a family from the 1880s to 1946, in the "Venice of the Orient" whose canals give way to motorcars. As the book moves forward into more recent and familiar territory, it becomes a remarkable testament to the enormous changes Thailand has experienced in a very short period. 

I delighted in the minutiae of old Thai customs and royal traditions, without ever feeling that these got in the way of the plot or the character development. I found the translation, however, very uneven. In places, it's really quite masterful, dealing deftly with many Thai-language intricacies such as its complex personal naming conventions and old royal traditions. In other cases, awkward translations or lengthy explanations in brackets bog down an otherwise airy text. 

In all, a great historical record of a country stepping into modernity.