Trying to make a list of 1000 books normalized by country population

- (dislike leaving post histories)

Looks like an interesting exercise! I suppose any attempt to condense world literature into 1000 books (or any other number...) is bound to end up being artificial, but it is at least artificial in a different way from the more usual subjective way of allocating spaces on the list. At the very least you’ll end up reading more Chinese and Indian writers. Bringing anthologies into the equation adds another level of selection bias, of course, but maybe all the editors are biased in different ways and cancel out...

Have you looked at the “classics in their own countries” threads in this group? There’s a lot of good stuff there, as there is in some of the past quarterly threads.

You don’t have a column for publication date in your table — are you applying any rules about what proportion of space you allocate to different periods? I suppose it gets tricky when you are comparing regions that have a long written tradition with others that don’t.

This is very exciting. I've starred your thread so I can come back to it and give recs when I have a bit more time! Maybe tonight...

The biggest problem with the 1001 list I find is that it is about 1001 books to read before you die and not 1001 authors to read. Going by authors for your list will help free up space.

Obviously just a typo, but I see you've allocated the sole Irish slot to Simone de Beauvoir. That probably obliges you to give Beckett one of the French slots..!

For one of the vacant Tanzanian slots, how about Mr Myombekere, which is in the form of a novel, but definitely not your average western novel?

Here’s my attempt at filling in some of the slots for African literature. I’ll have a look at the rest when I have a bit more time…
Touchstones don't seem to be working at the moment. I'll edit this post later to see if I can coax them back.

DRC
Sony Labou Tansi – born in Belgian Congo, lived in both Congos
In Koli Jean Bofane – Congo Inc. Bismarck’s Testament
Patrice Lumumba, first president of the Congo – Congo, my Country or Lumumba Speaks: The Speeches and Writings of Patrice Lumumba

Republic of Congo
Alain Mabanckou

Kenya
Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Tanzania
Abdulrazak Gurnah is on my wishlist, as is Shafi Adam, who actually writes in Swahili and is from Zanzibar. I can’t see anything from him translated into English however, which is surprising given the number English/Swahili bilingual people in the world.

Mauritania
I can’t find anything by a Mauritanian author translated into English. One possibility would be to go for Desert by French/Mauritian author Le Clézio and have it count for both Mauritania and Western Sahara, as it is set in both places. This would then free up the Mauritius slot for another author, such as Nathacha Appanah…

Djibouti
Abdourahman A. Waberi

Eritrea
Sulaiman S.M.Y. Addonia, an Eritrean author who migrated to Saudi Arabia, and then to the UK. The Consequences of Love features Eritrean immigrants but mainly takes place in Saudi Arabia, however. Silence is my Mother Tongue might be more apposite – I don’t know, I haven’t read it.

Somalia/Ethiopia
Maps by Nuruddin Farah

Ethiopia
The Wife’s Tale by Aida Edemariam is in my wishlist

Comoros
I can only think of Anguille sous roche, which hasn’t been translated into English, unfortunately – or fortunately for the poor translator who would have to grapple with 300 pages of dense, idiosyncratic French in a stream-of-consciousness style… Otherwise, there’s Tropic of Violence by Nathacha Appanah, who is Mauritian but has lived in Mayotte, the only island in the Comoros that voted to stay French. This book is set there. This would then free up the Mauritius slot for yet another author…

Madagascar
It’s such a shame that you can’t read French. Revenir by Raharimanana, a Malagasy (pronounced “malgash”) author who lives in France, is a terrific book. Otherwise, an anthology such as Voices from Madagascar: an Anthology of Contemporary Francophone Literature might be your best bet.

Malawi
The only author I’ve read from Malawi is Jack Mapanje. His poetry collection called Greetings from Grandpa is available on Scribd.

Burkina Faso
I can’t find anything in English!

Guinea
the Dark Child, Camara Laye’s childhood memoirs

Guinea Bissau
Amilcar Cabral

Guinea/Mali/West Africa
Sundiata, an Epic of Old Mali by D. T. Niane - oral history written down. Different version of this story are available, but this one was written by an African.
Segu by Maryse Condé, a French Guadeloupean author who used to live in West Africa (her first husband was Guinean). She is now married to her English translator, which means that all her books are available in English, in case you would like to read one of her Caribbean novels.

Mali
Amadou Hampâté Bâ

I realise that women are really under-represented. They’re already less likely to be published, and on top of that, less likely to be translated. One way to get around this is through the Women writing Africa collection: Women Writing Africa: The Southern Region, Women Writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel, Women Writing Africa: Eastern Region and Women Writing Africa: The Northern Region, which I now see you’ve included for the DRC.
If you like to read individual short stories, have a look at the Caine prize for African writing website (http://caineprize.com/previous-winners)

ETA: I forgot poor Benin. I haven't read poet Rashidah Ismaili but her work is available in English because she writes in English (and lives in the US).

A couple of resources, if you have not already found them:

https://ayearofreadingtheworld.com/thelist/

The Complete review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction and corresponding website:
http://www.complete-review.com/main/main.html

Both the above sources recommend The Parachute Drop for Burkina Faso.

In college I took a class called "Post-colonial Southern Asian Women Writers". The two anthologies that I enjoyed enough to keep are Truth Tales and Women Writing in India, Volume II.

Graywolf Press used to put out short story anthologies. I loved Stories From the Rest of the World and Stories from the New Europe.

ETA: For works representing Catalonia, Spain, look into Víctor Català. She is most known for her novel Solitude (which I loved), but also wrote poetry & plays.

>14 Settings: I was recently looking at my TBR pile for Women in Translation month and realised yet again how many authors write in English even though it's their second/third/fourth language.

From your Seal Press list of authors I can recommend Merle Collins (Grenada) if you like plain language poetry, especially Lady in a Boat.

>17 Settings: Touchstone: Poem Behind the Poem

Good News for Comoros! Ali Zamir's novel Anguille sous roche is available in English. The translation was published by Jacaranda Books under the title A Girl Called Eel.

Re Indian recommendations, are you looking specifically for books originally written in Gujarati, Telugu, etc. or for authors who come from the area where those languages are used?

I'm asking because for China, it looks like you may be going by ethnicities ?
By the way, I saw that The Last Quarter of the Moon is your book for "China, Evenki". Its author, Chi Zijian, is Han Chinese and writes in Chinese. She comes from an area with a big Envenki population, but I understand her approach was "ethnological" - lots of research and some immersion. I thought I'd let you know in case you're only interested in authors who are insiders to the culture they're writing about... (Not that I have a recommendation for an Evenki book originally written in Evenki by an Evenki, if there's such a thing. In fact, one of the characters in The last Quarter of the Moon spends his life inventing ideograms for the Evenki language, which is unwritten at that point...)

I like the idea of your list--at one point I tried to start a book group to read globally, but of course we were limited to what we had available. I've looked thru my shelves to see what I thought was interesting enough to keep.
-- Sierra Leone: You only seem to have 1 slot & it's filled, but I was very impressed with Radiance of Tomorrow which gave a flavor of village life changing when imperialist mining comes in

Haiti: you already have an anthology in the one slot. I'm impressed by both books I've read by Edwidge Danticat

You've got USA represented by various cultures but don't seem to have an indication of how you divvied out the slots to the various ones.
Linda Hogan would be a good writer to represent. I especially liked her essays (if you are looking for something other than novels) Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World
Another Anthology suggestion: A Gathering Of Spirit (my 1988 version doesn't begin with Sinister Wisdom 22/23, but guess it's the same book)

Our small library had a large donation from a collector of SE Asia/India. When I'm there Tuesday I'll see if I can get an idea of where the authors are from and add more ideas.

I've had a look at my books from the Indian subcontinent. I'm going to list them primarily by original language because it seems more telling and less political. There are also a number of novels which are difficult to assign to either India or Pakistan (of Bangladesh) because the authors lived pre-partition or are linked to both countries.

Hindustani (ie, written before differentiating between Urdu and Hindi made sense)
Kabir’s poetry, of course.
Meerabai’s poetry, available on https://allpoetry.com/Mirabai. She’s a 16th-century poet from Rajasthan.

Urdu
For Pakistan, I saw you've already put down Basti, which is a classic! I haven't read it yet, but have heard good things of God'S Own Land: A Novel of Pakistan by Shaukat Siddiqi. It is part of the UNESCO collection of representative works in first English translations and was turned into a TV series in the seventies.

Hindi
Tamas by Bhisham Sahni
To hell with you Mitro! by Krishna Sobti

English
Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh – an absolute must-read about Partition.
Sunlight on a Broken Column by Attia Hosain – one of the first modern female Muslim authors with Ismat Chughtai (who wrote in Urdu). This novel is available from Virago. I loved it.
Madras on Rainy Days by Samina Ali. Despite its title, most of the action takes place in Hyderabad (the one in India).
Bhowani Junction by John Masters, an Anglo-Indian writer with roots in India dating back centuries.
The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru, one of my favourite authors.
Bhimayana: Experiences Of Untouchability by Srividya Natarajan, Stephen Anand, Durgabai Vyam and Subhash Vyam. A very original graphic novel about the life of Bhimayana, the Dalit activist. See my review here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/314988#7126374.

Kannada
Akka Mahadevi’s poetry. She’s a 12th-century poet from Karnataka.
Ghachar Ghochar

Tamil
One Part Woman by
Anything by Ambai

Kashmiri
I, Lalla : The Poems of Lal Ded

Punjabi
Anything by poet and novelist Amrita Pritam. She wrote in English and Punjabi.

Bengali
Apart from the classics you’ve already listed, you might be interested in Aranyak: Of the Forest by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay (I cannot vouch for it: I haven't read it but it's in my wishlist.)

Fantastic!! :D

I've been doing a bit of Googling and finally found something promissing for Telugu: The Liberation of Sita by Volga (also spelled Ōlgā). This author's real name is Lalita Kumari. She's a novelist as well as a translator (into Telugu) - she translated Woman at Point Zero, for example. She sounds fascinating and well worth reading. My wishlist is growing by the hour, thanks to you!

There must be plenty of LT users more knowledgeable than I am about Indian regional literature who can guide us. I'd be forever grateful if they chimed in because that is something that I'd like to explore myself...

I did find this though: 10 Translated Works by Indian Regional Authors

Ok, so I don't think this comment is helpful but it might be illuminating so...

There's also the usual tension between literary novels considered important enough for international translations and the popular literature that locals actually read. Some overlap exists in Indian/Sanskrit religious/historical classics that also have mass audiences, and the older poetry from respected authors, but there's also a massive market for chicklit in India. For example The Zoya Factor which was originally written in Indian English and had an astonishing first print run of 20,000 copies, which is monumental in India, and was then also translated into and printed in Marathi, and made into a Hindi language rom com film that premiered in the United Arab Emirates!

It wouldn't surprise me if there are many places in the world with thriving regional languages in which chicklit (or popular crime novels or whatever) is the most available published literature, especially where there's also a national language that's considered more suitable for literary works or where English is a common literary second/third language. I'd put money on chicklit being a significant part of the market in Nigerian regional languages, for example.

>29 Settings: I feel I should warn that The Zoya Factor is relentlessly about cricket (and therefore extremely Indian chicklit, lol).

I think you're onto something with the "Rotten English" connection. I've cheerfully read works in Indian English, various English-adjacent Creoles and Patois, Singlish, and Pidgin, for example, but many readers won't even read dialects from their home regions.

Readings in African Popular Fiction looks amazing! Thank you for the link.

My most fun ever spontaneous pop-lit find was Girls of Riyadh, a Saudi Arabian chicklit novel, unexpectedly shelved in my very English village's little free library housed in a disused red phonebox.

>31 Settings: Oh, I wasn't suggesting Girls of Riyadh is necessarily worth substituting for anything else. The writing is mediocre, and the story only about the "velvet" class (although I did find it interesting as that world is outside my personal experience). I was just surprised and pleased that it found me.

You've sourced a really impressive variety of anthologies for your list.

>35 Settings: Thank you for the publisher notes. I only truly realised this year that correlating books I like (or dislike) with which smaller niche publishers produced them makes my buying and reading choices easier and more productive of the desired results.

wow somehow I missed starring this thread and wow! Another Pandora Box um I mean another gift of book lists from LT people,I love it!!! I have nothing to add, just like reading what you guys are finding.

Tho I do have one question - when you say literature do you mean 'literature' whatever that term means for that country, versus genre? Or are you using Literature to encompass all books. Actually it would be really interesting to me to focus on sci/fan books globally.

>38 cindydavid4: >39 Settings: You might be interested in last year's Speculative Fiction from around the World theme read and list.

>39 Settings: If you want a contemporary Belgian-written comic, with a Dutch illustrator, to take the Tintin aftertaste away then Zidrou and Aimée de Jongh's Blossoms in Autumn (original French title translates as "The programmed obsolescence of our sentiments") is available in a good English translation. It's a slice of life love story with two older protagonists, and being European that means it's also NSFW. It's not cheerful because it's realistic about ageing but the story and the art are both well done. Aimée de Jongh has at least two other comic books translated into English, one about PTSD which I've read but can't recommend and one about various Taxi journeys around the world which I haven't read.

I've also read Aya by Marguerite Abouet which is set in Ivory Coast, although written with hindsight from France and with a French illustrator. I didn't enjoy it and didn't read the whole series but it is an interesting slice of life.

>41 Dilara86: Yes, thank you!

>39 Settings: thanks for the clarification. I agree totall\y

>44 Settings: Yes, Aya is set in Ivory Coast. Be careful if you do decide to buy it as there are several English formats and translations into different languages that all share the same title!

Tintin is generally worse than Asterix for overt racism, but it's presumably possible to skip the absolute worst books for a sample read. I don't recall reading any Tintin, but Asterix is culturally influential and definitely featured in my long ago UK childhood because my brother had a couple of books.

I'm honestly not suggesting you read the books I'm linking. I'm only mentioning them in response to your commentary (which I'm reading because it's interesting) to let people know they exist.

>1 Settings: Quite and undertaking! I second >2 thorold:'s suggestion about country and area threads - there is always something to find there.

Just wondering whether the UK should be split into its different countries, as the writing from each often has its own flavour and themes distinct from the others.

>47 Settings: "I pretty much want to read all books, so just mentioning stuff makes me want to read it."

I suffer from a similar affliction. Tell me if you want me to stop naming names.

>47 Settings: You might want to consider replacing the Norton Anthology, designed for American students, with something more quirkily British, like Helen Gardner's New Oxford Book of English Verse, which excludes American and Commonwealth poets. It only goes up to 1950, though, and you'll still have an overlap with Scotland.

>48 spiralsheep: Oh I think its an affliction of many of us here, one that is contagious and we really don't want a cure for.

>50 cindydavid4: I try to avoid proselytising for my personal faves but if someone bemoans a lack of X genre, Y comics, or Z rare country, then I do tend to let loose.

heh, I have no problem with that!

Probably not on the same level as those mentioned above and not sure they should be included in the list but Kitchen Gods Wife and Joy Luck Club were wonderful stories of immigration and 2nd generation, life in China, and the struggles of all of the families involved. I had trouble getting into her later books, they started sounding too much alike.

>40 Settings: Quino died yesterday. I'm reading Mafalda 1 again to celebrate his life and work. You're in for a treat when you get to Argentina.

>62 Settings: Iceland ... rocky in places — I expect that goes with the territory! (Sorry)

>63 thorold:

Ha. :D

>66 Settings: "or compose songs making fun of them"

BRB, rescheduling my leisure time.

>69 Settings: Your post reminded me that I need to dig out Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, which was edited by Miguel Algarín, the puertorriqueño founder of the Café in Alphabet City, and professor of English at Rutgers, my undergraduate alma mater, who died two weeks ago today. When I worked at NYU Medical Center in the early 90s I befriended a lovely puertorriqueña who worked as an administrative assistant in the same department and was an amateur poet, and she took me there several times, to watch poetry slams and dance to music in between the competitions, which was thoroughly enjoyable.

>68 Settings: assuming that would help

Probably only a bit! With most creoles, they end up looking more like the base language when they are written down than when they are spoken, but Haitian Kréyol has developed its own wonderful spelling system that looks nothing like the French one, as you'll have seen, so you need a lot of imagination even to see the words that are taken over directly from French. Given that it's basically phonetic, it might actually be easier if you don't know French. I've never got very far with it, beyond puzzling out some examples of parallel text.

>74 Settings: Thank you for those translation comparisons.

"At the end I learned Shri Krishna was the only one,
but I had no knowledge, no wisdom, and no devotion."

and

"in the end, there is only Lord Krishna:
no devotion, no knowledge, no mind."

convey strikingly different concepts. The second seems more traditional and yet the first translation generally seems more coherent (although maybe that's suspicious - so difficult to guess!).

>79 Settings: Hmm, I've got Forbidden Fruit Stories by Fazil Iskander to read somewhere, but it's not a priority, so I'm sad to see you dnfed a novel by the same author (especially as I suspect you're a more tolerant reader than me, lol).

Congrats on having the sense to dnf The Prophet and One Hundred Years of Solitude though. >;-)