A short while ago I decided to post this project on Reddit and see if anyone can recommend additional books from their countries. The amount and quality responses completely shocked me - in a good way! I have got over 400 book recommendations from all over the world, often less known literature or just the books from the countries I haven't covered yet.
I am sharing this list here both for myself and for anyone else to search easily for their next read.
While these books cover about a 100 countries, there still are many gaps, mainly for the smaller nations in Africa, Oceania, and the "-stan" countries (eg Kazakhstan, Tajikistan) where I don't have a plan for reading. I'd love to hear any suggestions for any places whether included here or not.
In any case I will be adding additional lists based on my own research for most of the countries of the world as soon as I get to reading them. Without further ado, here's the recommendations for the reading list from Reddit.
Reading list by country as suggested by Reddit's readers
| Continent | Country | Book_recommendations |
|---|---|---|
| Africa | Botswana | Agustina Bazterrica: Tender Is the Flesh; Michael Stanley: Detective Kubu books; |
| Africa | Burkina | Thomas Sankara; |
| Africa | Egypt | Naguib Mahfouz: The Cairo Trilogy; Vikram Seth: A Suitable Boy; Basma Abdel Aziz: The Queue; Azazeel by Youssef Zaidane; Woman at Point Zero by Nawal el Saadawi ; The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Aswany ; Ahdaf Soueif: The Map of Love; |
| Africa | Ethiopia | Abraham Verghese: Cutting for Stone; |
| Africa | Ghana | Yaa Gyasi: Homegoing; Marilyn Heward Mills: Cloth Girl; |
| Africa | Guinea-Bissau | The Ultimate Tragedy by Abdulai Sila; |
| Africa | Kenya | Wangari Maathai: Unbowed; City of Thorns: Stories from the World's Largest Refugee Camp by Ben Rawlence; |
| Africa | Mauritius | Ananda Devi: Eve Out of Her Ruins; |
| Africa | Morocco | Laila Lalami: hope and other dangerous pursuits; Tahar Ben Jelloun : Leaving Tangier; Leila Abouzeid: Year of the Elephant; The Sand Child by Tahar Ben Jelloun; |
| Africa | Mozambique | Mia Couto: Confession of the Lioness; Sleepwalking Land; |
| Africa | Nigeria | Amos Tutuola: Palm Wine Drunkard; Oyinkan Braithwaite: My Sister the Serial Killer; Chinua Achebe: Arrow of God; Chimamanda Adichie; Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett; Buchi Emecheta: Kehinde; The New Tribe; |
| Africa | Rwanda | Jean Hatzfeld: Dans le nu de la vie; |
| Africa | South Africa | Deon Meyer: Thirteen Hours; Zakes Mda, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Marita van Der Vyver; Athol Fugard; J. M. Coetzee: Disgrace; cry, the beloved country; Fever (Deon Meyer); Spud (John Van Der Ruit); Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee); The House In Tyne Street (Linda Fortune); Commando: A Boer Journal Of The Boer War (Deneys Reitz); Long Walk To Freedom (Nelson Mandela); Zakes Mda; Ways of Dying; |
| Africa | South Sudan | Tayeb Salih: Season of Migration to the North; |
| Africa | Sudan | Valentino Achak Deng: What is the What; Linda Sue Par: Long Walk to Water; |
| Africa | Zambia | Namwali Serpell: The Old Drift; |
| Asia | Bangladesh | Gitanjali: Tagore; Tree Without Roots by Syed Waliullah; 1971 by Humayun Ahmed; |
| Asia | Burma (Myanmar) | Nu Nu Yi: Smile As They Bow; Aung San Suu Kyi: Letters from Burma; Pascal Khoo Thwe: From the land of green ghosts; |
| Asia | India | Rabindranath Tagore; RK Narayan; Arvind Adiga: White Tiger; Amish Tripathi: The Shiva trilogy; Salman Rushdie: Satanic Verses; Midnight's Children; Aravind Adiga; Arvind Adiga: The White Tiger; R K Narayan : Malgudi Days; Bankim Chandra Chattopadhay: Devi Choudhurani; Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru: The Discovery of India; Madhuri Vijay: The Far Field; Fatima Farheen Mirza: A Place for Us; Amitav Ghosh; A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry; An Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri; Ashwin Sanghi; Shashi Tharoor; Anuja Chauhan: The Zoya factor; Those Pricey Thakur Girls; K.R.Meera: Hangwoman; |
| Asia | Indonesia | Buru Quartet by Pramoedya Anta Toer; Beauty is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan; This Earth of Mankind; |
| Asia | Iran | Shahnameh, Masnavi, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Saadi: Gulistan and Bustan, The Divan of Hafiz; Savushun, Kelidar, The Blind Owl; Shahrnush Parsipur: Women Without Men; Marjane Satrapi: Persepolis; Iraj Pezeshkzad: My Uncle Napoleon; |
| Asia | Israel | Nahum Gutman: orange peels; |
| Asia | Japan | Banana Yoshimoto: Kitchen; Soseki Natsume: Kokoro; Mishima Yukio: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion; Kawabata Yasunari: Palm of the Hand Stories; |
| Asia | Korea, North | Bandi: The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea; Paek Nam-nyong: Friend; |
| Asia | Korea, South | Kyung-sook Shin: Please Look After Mom; Hwang Jungeun: One Hundred Shadows; han kang: vegetarian; Cho Nam Ju: Kim Ji Young Born 1982; Min Jin Lee: Pachinko; Hwang Sok-yang: Familiar Things; Kim Ji Young, Born 1982; |
| Asia | Kuwait | Layla AlAmaar: Silence is a Sense; |
| Asia | Kyrgyzstan | Chingiz Aitmatov:The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years; |
| Asia | Laos | Outhine Bounyavong: Mother's Beloved; Maybe Orwell: Burmese Days; Sinxay: Renaissance of a Lao-Thai Epic Hero; |
| Asia | Lebanon | Hanan al-Shaykh: The Story of Zahra; Elias Khoury: Little Mountain; Rabih Alameddine: I, the Divine: A Novel in Frist Chapters and The Hakawati (the storyteller); Zena El Khalil: Beirut, I Love You: A Memoir; Nour Abou Fayad: The Complete Opposite of Everything; Mazen Kerbaj: Beirut Won't Cry: Lebanon's July War: A Visual Diary; |
| Asia | Malaysia | Tan Twan Eng: The Garden of Evening Mists; The Gift of Rain; |
| Asia | Oman | Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi; |
| Asia | Pakistan | Shahab Namah; Saadat Hasan Manto: Mottled Down; |
| Asia | Phillipines | Jose Rizal: Noli mi Tangere; F. Sionil: Ermita; F.H. Batacan: Smaller and Smaller Circles; Jessica Hagedorn: Manila Noir; Gina Apostol: Gun Dealers Daughter; Gina Apostol: Insurrecto; Ninotchka Rosca: State of War; Nick Joaquin: The Woman Who Had Two Navels; Tropical Gothic; |
| Asia | Russian Federation | Lukyanenko: Night Watch; Tolstoy, Chekov, Solzhenitsyn, Dostoyevsky, and Turgenev; Sergei Lukyanenko: Night Watch/Day Watch; |
| Asia | Saudi Arabia | Abdul Rahman Al-Munif: Cities of Salt; |
| Asia | Singapore | Let Me Tell You Something About That Night by Cyril Wong; |
| Asia | Sri Lanka | Shyam Selvadurai: Funny Boy; |
| Asia | Syria | Khaled Khalifa: Death Is Hard Work; The Dark Side of Love by Rafik Schami; |
| Asia | Thailand | Duanwad Pimwana: Bright; Kukrit Pramoj: Four reigns; |
| Asia | Turkey | Insan Okay Anar: The Atlas of Misty Continents; Orphan Pamuk: My Name is Red; Yusuf Atilgan: Motherland Hotel; Elif Shafak: 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in This Strange World; A Strangness in My Mind by Orhan Pamukh; Elif Shafak; Bastard of Istanbul; Memed, Yeshar Kemal: My Hawk; Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar: The Time Regulation Institute; |
| Asia | Uzbekistan | Hamid Ismailov: the devil's dance; |
| Asia | Vietnam | Nguyen Du: The tale of Kieu; Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Sympathizer; Bao Ninh: The sorrow of war; Vu Trong Phung: Dumb luck; Nguyen Ngoc Tu: Endless field; Dang Thuy Tram: Last night i dreamed about peace; Nguyen Nhat Anh: I see yellow flower in green grass; Ticket to childhood; |
| Asia | Yemen | Ali Al-Muqri: Hurma; |
| Disputed | Faroe Islands | Heðin Brú: the old man and his sons; |
| Disputed | Palestine | Adania Shibli: Minor Detail; Ghassan Kanafani: Men in the Sun; |
| Disputed | Hong Kong | Chan Ho-kei: The Borrowed; |
| Disputed | Puerto Rico | Rosario Ferre: Vecindarios Excéntricos” (eccentric neighborhoods); La Carreta by René Marqués; War Against all Puerto Ricans by Nelson Denis; |
| Europe | Albania | Ismael Kadare: Broken April; Chronicle in Stone; The General of dead army; The Siege; Fatos Kongoli: The Dog's Skin (Lëkura e qenit); |
| Europe | Armenia | Narine Abgaryan: Three Apples Fell From the Sky; Micheline Aharonian Marcom: Three Apples Fell from Heaven; |
| Europe | Austria | Miritz Saphir: Der falsche Kaschtan; |
| Europe | Belgium | Hugo Claus: The Sorrow of Belgium; Jacqueline Harpman; melie Nothomb's "Mercure"; Fear and Trembling; |
| Europe | Bosnia and Herzegovina | Meša Selimović: Death and the Dervish; Ivo Andrić; The Bridge on the Drina; |
| Europe | Bulgaria | Dimitar Dimov: Tobacco; Zachary Stoyanov: Extracts from Notes on the Bulgarian Uprisings; Ivan Vazov: Under the yoke; Georgi Gospodin: The Physics of Sorrow; 'East of the West' by Miroslav Penkov; Aleko Konstantinov: Bai Ganyo Incredible Tales of a Modern Bulgarian; |
| Europe | Croatia | Kristijan Novak: Dark Mother Earth; |
| Europe | Cyprus | Lipertis; Montis; |
| Europe | Czech Republic | Milan Kundera: Unbearable lightness of being; Ivan Klíma: My Golden Trades; Spaceman of Bohemia; |
| Europe | Denmark | Carsten Jensen: We, the drowned; Inger Christensen: Alphabet; |
| Europe | Estonia | Andrus Kivirähk: The Man Who Spoke Snakish; A.H. Tammsaare: The Misadventures of the New Satan; August Gailit: Toomas Nipernaadi; A.H. Tammsaare: I Loved a German; Kai Aareleid: Burning Cities; Andrei Ivanov: Hanuman’s Travels; Pobeda 1946. Ilmar Taska: The Car Called Victory; |
| Europe | France | Bredin: The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus; Nadja by Andre Breton; The Collected Poems of Robert Desnos; |
| Europe | Georgia | The Knight in the Panther's Skin; |
| Europe | Germany | Juli Zeh: Unterleuten; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The Sorrow of Young Werther; |
| Europe | Greece | Nikos Kazantzakis: Last Temptation; Captain Michalis; Zorba the Greek; Austerity Measures: The New Greek Poetry; Alexandros Papadiamantis: The Murderess; Giorgos Seferis; Odysseus Elytis; Constantine Peter Cavafy; Antonis Samarakis: The Flaw; |
| Europe | Ireland | Frank McCourt: Angela's ashes; Tony hawks: Around ireland with a fridge; Patrick McCabe: The butcher boy; John B Keane: The field; Roddy Doyle; Seamus Heaney poetry; |
| Europe | Italy | Primo Levi: If this is a man; Sixth Day and Other Tales; Periodic Table; Umberto Eco: Baudolino; The name of the rose; Sebastiano Vassalli: The Chimera; Elsa Morante: History; Dacia Maraini: The Silent Duchess; Natalia Ginzburg: Family Sayings; Stefano Benni; Alessandro Baricco; Itali Cavalho: If On a Winter’s Night A Traveller; Ignazio Silone: Fontamara; Italo Calvino: Cosmicomics; Cesare Pavese; Beppe Fenoglio; Goliarda Sapienza: The Art of Joy; Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa: Il Gattopardo (The Leopard); |
| Europe | Hungary | László Krasznahorkai: Satantango; Ferenc Molnár: The Paul Street Boys; Sándor Márai: Embers; Antal Szerb: Journey by moonlight; Arthur Koestler: Darkness at Noon; Magda Szabó: Also The Door; Rejtő Jenő; Ephraim Kishon; Géza Gárdonyi: Eclipse of the Crescent Moon; Gyula Krudy; Laszlo Almássy: With Rommel's Army in Libya; Jokai Mor: The Barons Sons; Magda Szabó: Abigail;Geza Ottlik: School at the Frontier; |
| Europe | Latvia | Alberts Bells: The Cage; Zigmunds Skujiņš: Nakedness; Jānis Joņevs: Doom 94; |
| Europe | Liechtenstein | prince Hans-Adam: The state in the Third Millenium; Armin Oehri; Mathias Ospelt; Amelia Blackwood; Patrick Boltshauser; |
| Europe | Macedonia | Petre M. Andreevski's Pirey, Slavko Janevski's The Unrelenting; Luan Starova's My Father's Books; Goce Smilevski's Conversation with Spinoza, Venko Andonovski's The Navel of the World; Rumena Bužarovska's My Husband; |
| Europe | Moldova | Lorchenkov: The Good Life Elsewhere; |
| Europe | Montenegro | Ognjen Spahić: Hansen's Children; |
| Europe | Netherlands | Willem Frederik Hermans: An Untouched House; Harry Mulisch: Discovery of Heaven; W.F. Hermans: The Darkroom of Damocles; Roxane van Iperen: The sisters of Auschwitz; Anne Frank: The diary of Anne Frank; Multatuli: Max Havelaar; Kader Abdolah: House of Mosque; |
| Europe | Poland | Dorota Terakowska: Córka Czarownic; Henryk Sienkiewicz; Witold Gombrowicz: Cosmos; The Doll by Bolesław Prus; |
| Europe | Portugal | José Saramago: Blindness; Seeing; Baltasar and Blimunda; All the Names; Death with Interruptions; O evangelho segundo jesus cristo; The Cave; Portugal; Miguel Torga: Grape Harvest; Eça de Queiroz: Os Maias; Luíz Vaz de Camões: The Lusiads; Eça de Queiroz: The Maias; José Luis Peixoto; Walter Hugo Mãe; |
| Europe | Romania | Marin Preda: The Moromete Family; Mircea Eliade: Maitreyi; Liviu Rebreanu: Ion; Liviu Rebreanu: Adam and Eve; Enigma Otiliei; Baltagul; Amintiri din copilarie; Liviu Rebreanu: The forest of the hanged; Panaït Istrati: Kyra Kyralina; My travels; Mihail Sebastian: For Two Thousand Years; Journal: 1935-1944; Herta Muller: Land of the Green Plums; |
| Europe | Serbia | Ivo Andrić: Na Drini ćuprija; Dobrica Cosic; Danilo Kiš: Early Sorrows; Ivo Andrić: The Bridge on the Drina; |
| Europe | Slovenia | Vladimir Bartol: Alamut; |
| Europe | Spain | Andres Barba; La verdad sobre el caso Savolta; |
| Europe | Sweden | Karin Boye: Kallocain; |
| Europe | United Kingdom | Gerald Durrell; |
| North America | Canada | Yann Martel: The High Mountains of Portugal; Rohinton Mistry: A Fine Balance; Hubert Aquin: Next episode; Tom King: The Inconvenient Indian; Farley Mowatt, Pierre Berton, Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, Yann Martel, Margaret Laurence; |
| North America | Costa Rica | Tales of my Aunt Panchita, mamita yunai; unica looking at the sea; Joaquín Gutiérrez: Cocori; José León Sánchez: The Lonely Men's Island; Carlos Salazar Herrera: Cuentos de Angustias y Paisajes; Carlos Luis Fallas: Mamita Yunai; Carmen Lyra: Los Cuentos de mi Tía Panchita; Aquileo Echeverría: Concherias; Carlos Luis Fallas (Calufa): Marcos Ramírez; Fernando Contreras Castro: Única mirando al mar; Lara Ríos: El círculo de fuego blanco; |
| North America | Cuba | Carlos Eire: Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy; Cirilo Villaverde : Cecilia Valdés; Havana Fever by Leonardo Padura; Fidel Castro: History Will Absolve Me; Che Guevara's Guerilla Warfare; Yoss: A Planet for Rent; |
| North America | Dominican Republic | Julia Alvarez: En el tiempo de las mariposas; Mario Vargas Llosa: “La fiesta del chivo”; |
| North America | Guatemala | Miguel Angel Asturias: El Señor Presidente; |
| North America | Haiti | Farewell, Fred Voodoo by Amy Wilentz; |
| North America | Honduras | Ramon Amaya Amador: Green Prison; |
| North America | Jamaica | Nicole Dennis-Benn's: Here Come's the Sun; |
| North America | Mexico | Eduardo Matos Moctezuma: La Piedra del Sol; |
| North America | Trinidad and Tobago | VS Naipaul: Miguel Street; |
| North America | United States | Twain, Fitzgerald, Bierce, Wolfe, Steinbeck; |
| Oceania | Australia | Trent Dalton: Boy Swallows Universe; Jane Harper: The Dry; Melissa Lucashenko: Too Much Lip; Tara June Winch: The Yield; Kate Grenville: The Secret River; ML Stedman: The Light Between Oceans; Melina Marchetta: Looking for Alibrandi; Picnic at Hanging Rock; Harp In The South; Katharine Susannah Prichard: The Rabbit Proof Fence; The Pioneers; Trent Dalton: Boy swallows universe; Tim Winto: Cloud Street; Melinda Marchetta: Looking for Alibrandi; Tim Winton: Cloudstreet; Peter Carey: True History of the Kelly Gang; John Marsden: Tomorrow, When the War Began; Markus Zusak: The Book Thief; Bruce Pascoe: Dark Emu; |
| Oceania | New Zealand | Keri Hulme: The Bone People; Wit Ihimaera; Eleanor Catton: The Luminaries; Once Were Warriors; Sheryl Jordan: Winter of Fire; Tamsyn Muir: Gideon the Ninth; Sam Hurley: Compliance; Witi Ihimaera: the Whale Rider; Graeme Kendall: To the Ice and Beyond; |
| Oceania | Vanuatu | James Michener: Tales of the South Pacific; |
| Other | Pre-USA | James Michener: Alaska and/or Hawaii; |
| South America | Argentina | Julio Cortázar: Hopscotch; Jorge Luis Borges: The Aleph; Cesar Aira; Selva Almada; Samanta Schweblin; Gabriela Cabezon Camara; The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares; Horacio Quiroga; Roberto Fontanarrosa; Manuel Puig; Mariana Enriquez; |
| South America | Brazil | Machado de Assis: Epitaph of a Small Winner; Drauzio Varella: Inside Brazil's Most Dangerous Prison; Guimarães Rosa: Grandes sertões Veredas ("The Devil to Pay in the Backlands"); Érico Veríssimo: Incidente em Antares; Um Lugar ao Sol; Clarice Lispector: The Hour of the Star; Captains of the Sands; Joao Gilberto Noll; Guimarães Rosa; Lima Barreto: The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma; Machado de Assis: The Alienist; Lima Barreto: The man who knew javanese; Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis; Captains of the Sand by Jorge Amado; Storage Room by Carolina de Jesus; Paulo Coelho: The Alchemist; |
| South America | Chile | Isabel Allende: House of the Spirits; Pablo Neruda; Vicente Huidobro; José Donoso: The Obscene Bird of the Night; The Obscene Bird of Night by Jose Donoso ; |
| South America | Colombia | Gabriel García Márquez: Chronicle of a Death Foretold; |
| South America | Ecuador | La Casa del qué Dirán; |
| South America | Peru | Mario Vargas Llosa: The Feast of the Goat; Jose Maria Arguedas; Ciro Alegría: El mundo es ancho y ajeno (Broad and Alien Is the World); |
| South America | Uruguay | Mario Beneditti: The Truce; Edurado Galeano: Open veins of Latinamerica; The Book of Embraces; |
| South America | Venezuela | Teresa de la Parra: Ifigenia, Miguel Otero Silva: Casas Muertas, Rómulo Gallegos: Doña Barbara; |
Photo by Ed Robertson on Unsplash
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