I started this books around the world project during the pandemic, when travel was off limits. I didn’t quite realize just how many countries there were and how hard it would be to find good books from or about some of these places. It’s super easy to find books about England and Ireland written in… [Read More]
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South Korea: The Disaster Tourist
I have been known to plan vacations based on where there’s been an economic crisis, because then it will be cheap. It’s not ghoulishness so much as knowing that I’m getting a bargain and the people who live in the destination will be happy to have the business. In The Disaster Tourist, Yun Ko-Eun creates… [Read More]
Dominican Republic: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Díaz won the Pulitzer Prize for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, his novel about a Dominican family haunted by a fukú, a multi-generational curse. Like his protagonists, Díaz has split his time between the US and the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispañola with Haiti. Haiti is a bit of… [Read More]
Burundi: Small Country
Burundi, indeed, is a small country in East Africa, with about 14 million people across 27,830 square kilometers. It was under German and Belgian colonial rule until 1962. The country has two primary ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. The Germans and Belgians kept the Tutsi monarch intact, but the Belgians began cutting off… [Read More]
Mexico: Pedro Paramo
This episode of reading around the world brings me to Mexico and Pedro Paramo. It’s a country that I’ve spent a lot of time in, as a tourist and a Fulbrighter, and I love it so much. This book is a classic of magical realist literature in a new translation that shows why it has… [Read More]
