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A Poet and Bin-Laden by Hamid Ismailov
This book tells the true story of Belgi, an Uzbek poet who fled the brutal regime in Uzbekistan and ended up in an Islamic militant/terrorist/dissident organisation up in the mountains of Tajikistan,...
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My Urohs by Emelihter Kihleng
This is my book from Micronesia* for the Read The World challenge. It is apparently the first collection of poetry by a Pohnpeian poet. I have to admit, I didn’t pick it up with a great deal of...
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A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution by Samar Yazbek
A Woman in the Crossfire is, as the subtitle suggests, an account of the Arab Spring-inspired uprisings in Syria; or at least the first few months of them. This is my book from Syria for the Read The...
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88 Days – A true story of Somali Pirates in the Indian Ocean by Francis Roucou
This is a first person account of being kidnapped and held for ransom by Somali pirates. Roucou was the captain of the Indian Ocean Explorer, a boat from the Seychelles which was chartered by tourists...
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The Soul of the Rhino by Hemanta Mishra
Hemanta Mishra is a Nepali conservationist who, among other things, was part of the campaign to set up Nepals’ first national park, primarily to protect what is usually referred to as the Indian...
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Beyond the Islands by Alicia Yánez Cossío
Beyond the Islands is set in the Galapagos. It’s a novel in the form of a set of eight stories, each about a different character. Each picks up from where the previous one left off, and there is...
View ArticleBooks of the year 2012
Now I list (most of) the books I read on Goodreads, it’s pretty easy to glance back over the books I read in 2012. And I can report the sad fact that I didn’t give a single book a five star rating last...
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The Republic of San Marino by Charles de Bruc
… or to give him his full Ruritanian title, ‘Comte Charles de Bruc, Chargé d’Affaires de la République de St Marin à Paris, Grand Croix de l’Ordre Équestre de Saint Marin, Officier de l’Ordre des SS....
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The Diesel by Thani Al-Suwaidi
I actually finished this about a week ago, but I’ve been busy doing other things: hacking, snorting, waking up in the night with my lungs apparently trying to invert themselves. But this morning I feel...
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The Free Negress Elisabeth by Cynthia Mc Leod
This is the novelised true story of Elisabeth Samson, a freeborn black woman in C18th Suriname, when it was a Dutch colony built on slave labour. She became one of the richest landowners in the colony...
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Survival in the Killing Fields by Haing Ngor and Roger Warner
Survival in the Killing Fields is my book from Cambodia for the Read The World challenge. Haing Ngor was a doctor in pre-revolutionary Phnom Penh. That alone was enough to make him a target for the...
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The Teacher of Cheops by Albert Salvadó
Albert Salvadó is an Andorran novelist; The Teacher of Cheops is the only one of his books to be translated into English, and it is, unsurprisingly, my book from Andorra for the Read The World...
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Life and a Half by Sony Labou Tansi
This is my book from the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the Read The World challenge (which was still the Belgian Congo when Sony Lab’ou Tansi was born and was Zaire when he died). It is yet...
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The Chronicles of Dathra, a Dowdy Girl from Kuwait by Danderma
Part of the point of the Read the World challenge was to read things that would never have found normally. The Chronicles of Dathra certainly fits that description; it is self-published Kuwaiti...
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The Blue Sky: A Novel by Galsan Tschinag
A book from the perspective of the youngest child of a family of nomadic Tuvan sheep herders in Mongolia. Apparently it’s the first book of an autobiographical trilogy,* along with The Gray Earth and...
View ArticleAfrican Philosophy: Myth & Reality by Paulin J. Hountondji
This is my book from Benin for the Read The World challenge. I ordered it because I fancied a change from post-colonial fiction, and then regretted it almost immediately; I’ve always been a bit...
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Read The World challenge: status report, 2013
As of August 1st, I’ve been reading my way round the world for five years and I’m at 135 countries accounted for — or 99 books read since I started (99½, actually). You can check the map here. Which...
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God’s Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembène
This is a novel from 1960 about the railway workers’ strike on the Niger-Dakar railway 13 years earlier. When I said in my Read The World challenge status update that I’d read 16½ books this year, this...
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Yes, (Saudi) Minister! A Life in Administration by Ghazi Algosaibi
This is my book from Saudi Arabia for the Read The World challenge. I was looking for Saudi novels, and found Algosaibi because, as well as being a government minister and then ambassador, he wrote...
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Mirabella and the Pearl of Chulothe by Laila Al Bellucci
This is my book from Oman for the Read The World challenge. It’s a YA fantasy novel set in an English boarding school, so it’s a slightly odd choice for my purposes; but there weren’t many good...
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