Read your way around the world

With international travel off the cards for a little while longer, we've selected some reads to take you around the world from the comfort of home.

Sweden


A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Ove is the block's grumpy old man who enforces strict neighbourhood rules and whom everybody avoids. One ordinary day a new family moves in next door to Ove and turns his world on its head.

Also available on DVD.

United States of America



For years, rumours of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. She's barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark. But Kya is not what they say.

Also available on DVD.

Botswana


The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Wayward daughters. Philandering partners. If you've got a problem, and no one else can help you, then pay a visit to Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's only female private detective. Her methods may not be conventional, but she's got warmth, wit and canny intuition on her side.

Also available on audio CD and eAudiobook.

South Korea



The life story of one South Korean woman born at the end of the twentieth century. This worldwide sensation raises questions about endemic misogyny and institutional oppression which are relevant to all.

Also available as an eBook and eAudiobook.

Italy


Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman

The story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them.

Also available on DVD.

Samoa


Afakasi Woman by Lani Wendt Young

A collection of 24 short stories; the joys and tribulations of being a woman in Samoa and the struggles brought to an island nation by climate change.

Australia


Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko 

Wise-cracking Kerry Salter has spent a lifetime avoiding two things: her hometown and prison. But now her Pop is dying and she's an inch away from the lockup, so she takes a Harley and heads south to Durrongo. Kerry's plan is to spend twenty-four hours, tops, over the border. She quickly discovers, though, that Bundjalung country has a funny way of grabbing on to people.

India


The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, fraternal twins Esthappen and Rahel fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family.

United Kingdom


Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

Teeming with life and crackling with energy – a love song to modern Britain, to black womanhood. Follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.

Nigeria



Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education. This, her mother has told her, is the only way to get a 'louding voice' - the ability to speak for herself and decide her own future. But instead, Adunni's father sells her to be the third wife of a local man who is eager for her to bear him a son and heir. When Adunni runs away to the city, hoping to make a better life, she finds that the only other option before her is servitude to a wealthy family. As a yielding daughter, a subservient wife and a powerless slave, Adunni is told, by words and deeds, that she is nothing. But while misfortunes might muffle her voice for a time, they cannot mute it.

Russia


A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Twoles

Sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel by a Bolshevik tribunal for writing a "revolutionist" poem, Count Alexander Rostov must adjust to life as a "former person". For the next 30 years, from his shabby attic room, he strives to maintain a daily routine, explores the nooks and crannies of the hotel, bonds with the staff, and forms a relationship with a spirited young girl named Nina, which deepens and strengthens throughout his sentence. His conduct, his resolve, and his commitment to his home and to the hotel guests and staff form a triumph of the human spirit. As Moscow undergoes vast political and countless social upheavals, Rostov remains, implacably and unceasingly, a gentleman.

Greenland


Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

Franny Stone has always been the kind of woman who is able to love but unable to stay. Leaving behind everything but her research gear, she arrives in Greenland with a singular purpose: to follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration to Antarctica.

Ireland


Normal People by Sally Rooney

Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in rural Ireland. The similarities end there; they are from very different worlds. When they both earn places at Trinity College in Dublin, a connection that has grown between them lasts long into the following years. This is an exquisite love story about how a person can change another person's life – a simple yet profound realisation that unfolds beautifully over the course of the novel.

Comments

Post a Comment