Argentina has a fascinating economy. It was once one of the richest countries on earth, and now, it’s not. The current GPD per capita is $26,500, putting it at 88th globally. The country was caught flat-footed in the early 1900s when it lost its advantage exporting food to Europe. Rather than investing the surplus gained… [Read More]
Blog
Category: Rest of the World
Hungary: Flesh
A friend loaned me this Booker Prize-winning novel, so I decided to make it my pick for Hungary. Flesh, by David Szalay is a novel about a Hungarian man, István, who mostly drifts through life. Especially in the early sections of the book, I thought I was reading about Pete Davidson’s Chad character on Saturday… [Read More]
Switzerland: The Inspector Barlach Mysteries
For the nation of Switzerland, I read The Inspector Barlach Mysteries, a collection of strange detective stories by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, a Swiss writer mostly known for his plays. He wrote a few detective stories, and two of them are in this collection. These stories subvert the genre’s conventions and are as much about 1945 Munich… [Read More]
Belarus: The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko
My around-the-world reading project got stuck in the Bs because there just aren’t a lot of books on Belarus. One of my attempts turned out to be about Poland. The problem, it seems, is that Belarus doesn’t have a big enough literary culture to produce books that are translated to English, and the few that… [Read More]
Poland: The Extintion of Irena Rey
When I started this book project, back in the pandemic, I figured that I would mostly go through the list of the world’s countries alphabetically. That got thrown out the window early on for two reasons. The first is that I keep coming across books set in other countries with no rhyme or reason relative… [Read More]
