Hello, I have made a personal goal this year to broaden my horizons and try to read different authors from around the world.
Typically I only really read fiction books. I like fantasy, historical fiction, philosophical fiction. I tend to stay away from romance or contemporary fiction, though I'm not completely against them if the story is good enough.
Some examples of books I've already read in the past few months:
The Stranger – Albert Camus – Algeria
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera – Czech
Water Moon – Samantha Sotto Yambao – Phillipines
A Song To Drown Rivers – Ann Liang – China
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde – Ireland
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Columbia
A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini – Afghanistan
I've got about 25 countries so far but I'm looking for more. Right now I'm interested in more authors from eastern Europe, the middle east, Africa, and Latin countries.
I would greatly appreciate any suggestions!
by Mattanah22
17 Comments
*The darker nations* by Vijay Prashad
The Door by Magda Szabo – Hungary
The Oppermanns by Leon Feuchtwanger – Germany
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe – Nigeria
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Anything by Kafka
Master and Margarita by Bulgakova
Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good and its sequel An Elderly Lady Must Not be Crossed – Helene Tursten (Sweden)
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead – Olga Tokarczuk (Poland)
Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov (Ukraine)
House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (Chile)
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche (Nigeria)
There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak (Turkey)
All the Names by Jose Saramago (Portugal)
Cameroon: How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue
Kenya: The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber
I see you don’t have Scandinavian authors. The Millenium series starts with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And you obviously hate Japanese people s/ IQ84 by Murakami or A Wild Sheep Chase or Norwegian Wood all by Murakami.
Never Let Me Go
Dang, you like fantasy but didn’t list books from NA: The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Canadian Steven Erikson. Best fantasy series ever and it is not close.
Journey to the West AKA Monkey King by Wu Cheng’en Julia Lovel translation. The audio book BTW has a great narrator. He really picks up the attitude of Monkey and the humor. This is one of the most important pieces of Chinese literature
Blindness
Like Water for Chocolate
Crime and Punishment
India-
1. A Suitable boy by Vikram Seth (a mother finding a match for her daughter and good insight of newly independent India 47-52)
2. Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh (historical novel on Partition of India Pakistan)
3. Palace of Illusion by Chitra Banerjee (Fiction based on PoV of Draupadi one the heroines of the religious epic Mahabharata) – would suggest you to start with this one.
You will find everything you need on the [Read Around the World Challenge website](https://readaroundtheworldchallenge.com/). The site has books from all countries in the world grouped by [genre](https://readaroundtheworldchallenge.com/challenge_genres), authors’ countries of birth, story setting, [authors’ genders](https://readaroundtheworldchallenge.com/books/tag/female-author), etc. You can also [find books by clicking on countries on a world map](https://readaroundtheworldchallenge.com/map). There are also world-reading progress tracking tools that are automatically updated as you mark books as read, if you register for the challenge.
Here are some lists of books from all countries around the world, based on your request:
* [fantasy books](https://readaroundtheworldchallenge.com/books/genres-by-name/fantasy)
* [historical fiction books](https://readaroundtheworldchallenge.com/books/genres-by-name/historical-fiction)
* [philosophical books](https://readaroundtheworldchallenge.com/books/genres-by-name/philosophical)
Happy reading.
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)
Han Kang (Korea) *Human Acts* is my favorite.
Haruki Murakami (Japan). *Norwegian Wood*.
W.G. Sebald (Germany). *Austerlitz*.
Benjamín Labatut (Chile). *When We Cease to Understand the World*.
Marjane Satrapi (Iran/France). *The Complete Persepolis* (graphic novel)
László Krasznahorkai (Hungary). *The Melancholy of Resistance* (be prepared for very long paragraphs).
Margaret Atwood (Canada). *The Handmaid’s Tale.*
Perhat Tursun (Uyghur author in China who disappeared in 2018, reportedly sentenced to 16 years in prison). *The Backstreets*.
The Chemistry Of Tears by Peter Carey (Australia)
The Street Of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz (Poland)
My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola (Nigeria)
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata (Japan)
Naguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian novelist. His The Beginning and the End really gives a sense of life in mid 20th century Egypt