“Reading the World: How I read a book from every country” by Ann Morgan

The book tells a story of how the author successfully read one book from each country in a year - 196 books in total.

The first edition of this book was published in 2015 - three years after the actual quest and back then when it was not mainstream yet. She posted about the books that she was reading and the challenge itself on her blog, which she still keeps and which contains a huge number of books from various countries, so it is worth to check it out if you are looking for some recommendations.

I read the second, a bit revised and corrected edition from 2022. But I learned about this challenge in 2015 from the author's then Twitter post, where she posted about her TED talk about it. I commented on it, and she even liked my comment. 😀

In turn, Reading the World quest inspired me to start my own challenge with a slightly different purpose - I decided to read at least one book from each country I visit. The challenge is ongoing, and will be a lifelong one. I shared its intermediate results in 2021 on my blog. Since then, my home library expanded to include books from more countries, and I finished some of the books I brought from my previous travels, so another update is due, which I hope to do soon.

When I was writing the results of my Book travelling challenge in 2021, I realized that even though my list of visited countries was already relatively long, it was still missing so many countries, which I most likely never visit, so I also decided to start another challenge, also lifelong - just trying to read books from countries other than the USA and the UK. I am not sure how many books from how many different countries I read so far, I will need to write another post about it, but the list is certainly bigger than it was five years ago.

Back to the “Reading the World” book though.

I expected the book to contain plot summaries and the author’s feedback of all the 196 books she read during her quest - but that she did on her blog. The book, however, provided something way better: the author selected notable highlights and stories from the books or about the books that made a lasting impact on her, which served as springboards for deeper discussions on cultural misunderstanding, the politics of translation, national identity and post-colonialism, gender and voice in world literature. So rather than a compilation of isolated book reviews from around the world, “Reading the World” offers book recommendations grouped by thought-provoking themes, each one deepened by the cultural and historical context in which each of them was written.

A significant portion of the book details the challenges of finding books, especially from countries with limited publishing infrastructure or strict censorship. Morgan shares how she contacted embassies, NGOs, translators, and readers worldwide for recommendations - emphasizing how collaborative and community-driven the project became. The author shares numerous stories how some of the books or their translations were created specially for her challenge.

As an example, in one of the chapters the author tells a touching story about how she came to obtain a book from South Sudan. As the world's newest sovereign nation - declaring independence from Sudan in July 2011 - South Sudan emerged from 21 years of war with minimal infrastructure. In such a context, publishing and literary pursuits were far from the country's most pressing priorities. This could have been a significant hurdle for the project, given the absence of published books from the newly established nation. However, Julia Duany, Chair of the Civil Service Recruitment Board in South Sudan and an author who had published works prior to the country’s independence, agreed to write a story specially for this project. The story, read by Duany herself, can be listened to on the South Sudan page of Morgan’s blog. There are many stories like this in “Reading the World”, and it was incredibly rewarding to uncover them. I had already started my challenges thanks to the author, if I hadn't, I definitely would after I read the book. What it did was rekindle my motivation to read the world.