In this final week of Reading Takes You Everywhere, consider taking on world literature.
Ann Morgan was an undergraduate student at Cambridge University and had studied only English language literature, when suddenly she felt like “a literary xenophobe.” In her book, The World Between Two Covers: Reading the Globe, she tells us how she decided,“ ... to prescribe myself an intensive course of world literature and spend 2012 trying to read a book from every country in the world … aiming largely for contemporary novels, story collections, or memoirs, but leaving the door open for extraordinary blasts from the past here and there.” She also analyzes and discusses the problems of translation, how to find and select books, which people she consulted in making her selections, and reading difficulties with experimental types of literature. Because so many books are published every year, Morgan thought about the impossibility of trying to read it all. “Whichever way you look at it, if you’re trying to read the world, you’re pretty much screwed.” She made a decision and firmly advises all of us to do the same.
“We can stick with what we know, or we can embrace the impossibility of reading world literature properly and jump right in.” —Ann Morgan
To all adult readers, who participated in the summer reading program we hope you will keep reading all year long. Your library card makes it possible to check out hundreds of books and other materials for free. It is up to you, dear reader, to decide if you like any of them. If you don’t like something, then drop it—in the book drop, or remove from your e-reader. Los Angeles Public Library has many more books that will make you want to read on and on.
For readers who want more international literature, check out the following websites:
- Author Ann Morgan’s blog: A Year of Reading the World.
- International DUBLIN Literary Award. Check their Archive and Fiction Matters - newsletter archive. This is one of the richest literary prizes in the world at € 100,000. For translated works, the writer receives €75,000 and the translator €25,000. Nominations are made by public libraries around the world.
- Words Without Borders. “Our publications and programs open doors for readers of English around the world to the multiplicity of viewpoints, richness of experience, and literary perspective on world events offered by writers in other languages. We seek to connect international writers to the general public, to students and educators, and to the media and to serve as a primary online location for a global literary conversation.”
- Center for the Art of Translation: They have links to Translation Blogs We Think You Should Be Reading. “We are dedicated to finding dazzling new, overlooked, and underrepresented voices, brought into English by the best translators, and to celebrating the art of translation.”
- Europa Editions: This is a publisher’s website with sections divided by country, by continent and a separate section for World Noir; a link to Elena Ferrante’s weekly column with The Guardian.
- Lit Hub “… a single, trusted, daily source for all the news, ideas and richness of contemporary literary life.”