Reading the World

Read: The Eternal Son by Cristovao Tezza (Brazil), A Letter for the King  by Tonke Dragt (Netherlands) When I hear the word ‘Brazil,’ images of beautiful, cavaliering, elegant football spring immediately to mind. Their yellow shirts mirror the sunny joy that their football brings me and whenever a World Cup comes around, their fixtures are ones that I make sure I’m on the sofa for and however dull the actual match, I never lose the anticipation of seeing them again. When I asked my Brazilian friend, Lynn, for a book recommendation, subconsciously, I think I expected the novel to mirror the excitement of its football team as if Brazilian life is perpetually exciting and joyous. Cristavao Tezza’s autobiographical novel had nothing of the atmosphere that I have just described, but it is an important lesson to keep learning: to not live as if nonsensical stereotypes are actually all there is. I’ve made the mistake before. At university, I took a course in African litera...

Read: Jock of the Bushveld by J Percy FitzPatrick (South Africa), The Good Soldier, Sveyk by Jaroslav Hasek (Czech Republic), Embers by Sandor Marai (Hungary) As 2019 drew to a close, I took a walk with my family along Hove seafront. It’s an annual post-Christmas get-together of my siblings, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces and brothers-in-law. There’s a big old crowd of us walking into the bitter wind towards the rusty remnants of the West Pier. The appetite for walking varies hugely and usually, after a mere half mile or so, the call to turn round and head for the pub is given and we about-turn and shuffle back to our starting position. As I walked, I chatted with my brother-in-law, Tim, about my reading challenge and Jock of the Bushveld - book number three of my international challenge. He chose a book for me from his childhood, one he reckoned he’d read in 1995. I picture him sitting in his bedroom with a battered paperback while up in Johannesburg, Nelson ...

Read: Nostalgia by Mircea Cartarescu (Romania), An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe) Over the last few years, I’ve turned my casual reading of whatever book I fancy into some sort of epic challenge. It started with reading the complete works of Charles Dickens, a loose challenge that took a number of years to complete. Then, I did a twelve-book yearly challenge that I found online and lots of my colleagues were doing. I failed that one, not completing the final book before the year was out. I was meant to read a book I’d started before and not finished and I had already stumbled and failed to finish Middlemarch by George Eliot twice before and was determined that it would be third time lucky. Although the New Year rolled around without me finishing it, I did eventually get to the end during the following year’s alphabetical challenge where I read a book by an author with a surname beginning with every letter of the alphabet. Next up was a 100-book a year challenge. I...