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Sweden: fellow globetrotters
I’m not the only one trying to read the world. Since I launched this project to explore a novel, short story collection or memoir from every UN-recognised country in 2012, I’ve heard from people...
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France: a fine line
I heard about this book through a class I’ve been attending on free speech and translation, run by English PEN. The final session was set to involve a visit from translator Sarah Ardizzone (née...
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Papua New Guinea: novel techniques
This was one of several recommendations from Bernard Minol at the University of Papua New Guinea Press and Bookshop. Although I had not found many Papuan books in my initial searches, he was keen to...
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Trinidad and Tobago: relative values
I’ve written before about how globally renowned literary figures from small countries can often overshadow their compatriots on the world stage, becoming the go-to writer for literature from or about...
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Tanzania: family politics
When one publisher recommends the work of another, you know you’re likely to be on to a good thing. And so, when Lynette Lisk, commissioning editor of the Heinemann African Writers Series, told me...
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Seychelles: home from home
There wasn’t much out there for the Seychelles. The caretaker of the block of flats I live in had very kindly got on the case and found an interview with school counsellor and poet Stephanie Joubert,...
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Book of the month: ed. Nikesh Shukla, The Good Immigrant
One of the main points of this project has always been accessing voices that we don’t hear enough of in the anglophone world. Often, these voices are quite remote: stories by writers in minority...
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Book of the month: Dawit Gebremichael Habte
The question of whether a book has to be set in a particular country in order to be ‘from’ that place was a recurrent theme during my year of reading the world. Many people feel that this is an...
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Calling all book groups
Would you like me to come to one of your book group meetings? If so, read on… Later this month, my second novel, Crossing Over, will be published by Renard Press. Built around an encounter between a...
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