Update 5: A Year of Reading the Med

This month’s review consists of only one novel.  We’ve been busy getting the boat ready and actually sailing, and the novel in question was a whopper.

BOSNIA: Bosnian Chronicle by Ivo Andric.  ***1/2

Andric was awarded the 1961 Nobel prize for literature largely based on his Bosnian Trilogy works, of which the Bosnian Chronicle is the cornerstone.  It is a true masterpiece.  That said, the Mona Lisa is also a true masterpiece, and yet, I wouldn’t want it hanging in my living room.  This is how it is with Bosnian Chronicle for me.  The novel follows the travails of a French consul posted to a lost backwoods town in Bosnia during the Napoleonic wars, and the tense cohabitation with representatives of the Austrian empire, the ruling Turkish viziers, the local Serbs and their Russian orthodox supporters, and the hapless and resentful Bosnians themselves.  I truly appreciate the artistry, the craft, the precision, the depth, the local color, the character descriptions, the historical scope, the humor, the drama.  When you begin reading it, it is clear beyond doubt that you are witnessing brilliance.  But I didn’t love it.  I didn’t particularly care about any of the characters. I didn’t, in fact, realize who the main character was until well over half way into the novel. There is very little dialogue in the novel.  It is written in a storytelling fashion where we learn in-depth what each character is thinking, all about their past, about their thoughts on the future, their secret hopes and desires, and anything else the author thinks would make the character come alive.  Did I mention the novel is looooooooong?  An example:  a child dies a tragic death.  After the scene, the author uses the following chapter to examine the personal history of each of the 6 doctors that attempted to treat the child. No, this won’t change the outcome.  No, you don’t need this information to follow the rest of the story. Yes, okay, it may be interesting in that each of the doctors comes from one of the different communities living in the village and has a different perspective on what should have been done to save the child. But by this time in the novel, you suspect that this slog through their histories will take you nowhere and you are right.  

This was a critical turning point in the novel for me where I started shamelessly skimming pages.  Normally, I would have given up, but since I have been finding the literature of the Former-Yugoslavia particularly impenetrable, I forced myself to persevere.  

But at the same time, it *is* a masterpiece and the writing was far better than anything I’ve read in a very long time, even if I enjoyed other lesser novels more.  The irony is that the advice you would give to such an author to punch it up a bit – more dialogue, less description, cut out the scenes with no action – would destroy the work and turn it into a cheap pulp historical fiction novel like so many modern best-sellers.  Like fine art, there are novels that deserve to be appreciated for their mastery and craft rather than for their decorative appeal, and this is one of them.  Bosnian Chronicle is a novel to be savored slowly with a nice glass of scotch.  (Better buy a nice bottle, you’ll be at it for waaaaay more than one sitting…). 

And with this 5^th update and our impending departure, I will be taking a break from “reading the Med”  in order to sail it for awhile.  I need to re-immerse myself in books that really enthrall me (cheap and trashy though they may be by comparison) for the long route ahead.   

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Update 4: A Year of Reading the Med

This month’s reads were a mixed bag that left me rather depressed.  For the next round, I’m going to have to focus on countries and novels that don’t feature repressive regimes or war dramas.  I’m not sure I’ll be out of these woods anytime soon with countries like Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Montenegro still on my list. To take a break from the Med, I’ve recently plunged into the modern Chinese Classic Wild Swans by Jung Chang.  It features repressive regimes AND war dramas. Sigh.  

A reminder of my star system:

* = don’t bother

** = okay 

*** =  good 

**** = excellent !

EGYPT:  The Map of Love: A Novel by Ahdaf Soueif.  ***1/2

Short-listed for the 1999 Man Booker Prize.  A true historical fiction novel with equal doses of history and fiction.  The Map of Love (frankly, the novel deserves a better name…) weaves two multi-cultural love stories across time into the tapestry of Egyptian history from Turkish occupation and the Anglo-Egyptian war to 1998.  The story focuses on a young American woman and her Egyptian cousin who piece together the history of their grandmothers and great grandmothers (English and Egyptian) through letters and diaries while living through their own mixed-culture crises.  Through the letters, the story and Anglo-Egyptian history unfold in first-person narratives of several characters, and, in a few confusing bits that seem to have escaped a good editor, by an omniscient author. While the first-person accounts allow us to get to know several characters in depth, the shift in time and voice is often confusing. That said, the story is so engaging that we quickly forgive the annoyance of having to stop to make sure who is speaking.  There were generous doses of true history that other reviews have called “gently nationalist” or “sensitive”.  One of the reasons I embarked on this adventure of Reading the Med was to read Mediterranean authors, not western authors writing about Med countries, and so I greatly appreciated Soueif’s views.  However, the old novel-writing advice of “show, don’t tell” wasn’t always respected.  History should be woven in a living and transparent way into the story as much as possible; otherwise, you just end up with a group of characters sitting around the table discussing the ideas the author wants to get across.  While some important episodes of history (such as the Denshawai incident) are neatly treated, others are dealt with by having characters sit around a table and discuss points of view of history and culture.  It’s still interesting for readers (like me) who have very little background in Egyptian history, but it does make the novel feel a bit choppy and unconnected in spots.  But if you’re a reader like me, you’re not likely to go looking for Anglo-Egyptian history on your own or to stumble onto it accidently, so do yourself a favour and combine the enjoyable with the useful.  Read The Map of Love.      

SLOVENIA: That Night, I Saw Her by Drago Jancar. ***

Winner of France’s Best Foreign Book Prize 2014 written by one of Slovenia’s most popular authors.  This haunting mystery is a portrait of an enigmatic free-spirited young woman in the middle of a war whose refusal to accept the interpersonal changes that war imposes leads to her disappearance.  The backdrop, the Balkans of World-War II, plays an important role in the story, where friend and foe are brought together in close proximity, sometimes within the same family, and where allies and nazis and communists and partisans create a confusion of affiliations that makes it impossible to know who the good guys are. The author intentionally leaves the reader to flounder in this confusion, a confusion that our heroine rejects by treating people as individuals rather as members of a group. Too naïve to realize that she will not be judged with the same tolerance, her multiple affiliations lead to her disappearance. The author tells her story though the eyes of 5 witnesses, each of whom only knows a part of her story and the role they played in her final days.  It is a beautifully-crafted novel that exposes the tragedy and complexity of 20^th century Balkan history, and a story that has left me utterly depressed, but perhaps a bit more informed about the horrors of war away from the front lines.

SYRIA and LIBYA: The Future Arab: A Childhood in the Middle East (book 1: 1978-1984, book 2: 1984 – 1985) by Riad Sattouf. **1/2   Sattouf’s auto-biographical graphic novel about growing up blond in the Libya of Kadhafi and the Syria of Hafez Al-Assad was awarded the Prize for Best Album at the International Festival of Bande Dessinee in 2015, and was the 5^th most widely-translated French book of 2014.  These autobiographical graphic novels about growing up in a repressive society will remind you of the brilliant work of Marjane Satrapi of Persepolis fame.  It suffers in comparison, however, since it is neither laugh-out-loud nor particularly moving.  Sattouf was born to a Syrian father and French (Breton !) mother and these books recount his childhood growing up in countries trying to establish Arab socialist regimes. It is entertaining and educational in a way that sometimes only graphic novels can be… memorable but without feeling like you’ve been hit over the head with “a message.”  If you only want a light introduction to the culture, this may be a good choice.  But if you want something more poignant and profound from Libya, read Hisham Matar’s In the Country of Men (see Update 3).

And for heaven’s sake, after this round of depressing novels, go read Arto Paasilina’s The Year of the Hare.  This Finish feel-good masterpiece is a marvelous antidote to all these heavy dramas.

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Update 3: A Year of Reading the Med

I've created a new category "Reading the Med" if you would like to find the earlier updates and beginning of this project.  Update 3 includes two fantastic finds and a confession.

LIBYA:  In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar ****

A first novel, nominated for the 2006 Man Booker prize and winner of the 2007 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje prize.  This haunting story is one that will stay with me for a long time.  We see 1979 revolutionary Libya through the eyes of a 9-year old boy, whose father is taken away and tortured for subversive activities. Initially I dreaded reading this book, as I supposed it would be fairly predictable, bitter and sentimental.  But instead of focusing on the plight of the dissidents of the revolution, Matar tells the story of the family and friends caught in the cross-fire, where loyalties are tested and broken, cowardice is defined and redefined, and, because several of the main characters don’t act the way we want them to, the reader is forced to question how he/she would respond under the same pressures. As endearing as our boy narrator is, he is far from the noble stoic hero we want, manipulated by the regime and a victim of his own innocence, frustrations, and prejudices.  Several scenes are so chilling that I was not able to read more than a few pages at a time, but the often light-hearted recollections of childhood – even this childhood –  save the novel from becoming too dark. The writing is beautiful with strong sense-of-place and richly-defined characters.  The plot is well paced and the novel never bogs down in heavy-handed reflection.  Highly recommended.

TURKEY: The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak ***1/2

Foreword: I am a huge fan of Turkish literature.  You may have expected me to review the works of Nobel prize-winning Orham Pamuk (whom I ADORE) or one of my all-time favourites, The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmed Hamdi Tanpinar, or even Birds without Wings by Louis de Bernieres, not a Turkish author but author of an exceptional novel about the heartbreaking birth of the Turkish nation.  A few months ago, I was watching a (fantastic) tv show called “The Europe of Writers” where the featured country was Turkey.  Pamuk was featured, but I was also introduced to Sema Kaygusuz (whom I have yet to read) and Elif Shafak, Turkey’s most widely-read author and a fascinating character in her own right.  For Christmas, some good friends offered me Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul.

In 2006, this book earned its best-selling author a condemnation by the Turkish authorities for insulting the national identity, carrying with it a 3-year prison sentence. She was eventually acquitted. The Bastard of Istanbul addresses the delicate issue of the contested Armenian genocide and does a brilliant job of presenting the complexity of history and its interpretation by its victims’ descendents almost 100 years later. The story revolves around the friendship of two young women, one Armenian-American and the other Turk, who together walk the razor’s edge between amnesia and debilitating memory to try to understand how to (if possible) erase the past and move forward from the atrocities of their shared history.  In the midst of this deliberation, the author presents us with a metaphor for the Armenian-Turkish rift in the form of dark and unspeakable family secrets.  Initially a bit annoyed by this tactic, I agreed to go along with it to see how the metaphor played out, hoping it would provide some insight into the author’s thoughts on the Turkish dilemma.  I’m very glad I did.  At first, the response left me perplexed, and that has made me appreciate the book all the more. With reflection, the parallels offered by the author become clearer: heinous crimes committed by youth and the moral obligation to punish those crimes at the expense of spoiling a glorious past and destroying a whole family. To try to move forward building ever higher on an artificial foundation can only lead to disaster and collapse.  Clearer, but not yet clear.  What good is punishment without public recognition of wrong-doing?  Is assisted suicide still suicide? This is a tale that gives the reader a lot to think about after the last page has been consumed (after which you will certainly go back and re-read some critical passages to make sure you really understood what just happened…). This is a historical fiction novel that is essential reading to understand the beginnings of an impasse that still plagues us today.  As an added bonus, it is a joy to read, and, strangely, hysterically funny in parts.    

And a CONFESSION:  I have been cheating on the Mediterranean with other non-Mediterranean countries.  It just happened.  But I’d be lying if I said that it was meaningless or that it won’t happen again.

MEXICO: Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo (***)

SOUTH AFRICA:  J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians (****)  

FINLAND: I have just started Arto Paasilinna’s “Le Cantique de l’Apocalypse Joyeuse” with the english title, “The Best Village in the World.”

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Update 2: A Year of Reading the Med

Update 1 of this adventure highlighted some real gems of Mediterranean literature.  Round 2, however, was more of a mixed bag, which is a polite way of saying I slogged through some stinkers so that you don't have to. 

ISRAEL: A Pigeon and a Boy by Meir Shalev  ** ½

Winner of the Brenner Prize (Israel) and several other European awards from an internationally-acclaimed author.  With all due respect to the author and to the literary establishment that heaped glowing reviews onto this book, I need to tell you from the get-go that it’s going to be hard for me to describe this book without sniggering.  I do agree with one professional reviewer who call the book “unforgettable”.  Spoiler alert in effect as from this point.  Yair is a short dark muscular boy born into a tall blonde family, and we suspect something is amiss from the beginning.  Written from the view point of Yair as an adult in the throes of his own marital turmoil, our attention is focused on the story of a pigeon handler during Israel’s war of independence, who is (queue menacing music… dah! dah! dah!) a short dark muscular boy.  All that remains is to figure out how his mother met the pigeon boy, and what could be more straightforward than a pigeon boy meeting (drum roll, cymbal clash and pregnant pause…) a pigeon girl!  The pigeon boy decides they will not have sex before he goes off to war because of his belief that he would not return alive if they did.  But hang on a minute … we know from the beginning of the story that the pigeon boy dies in battle, torn to shreds by snipers’ bullets.  How could the boy possibly be Yair’s father, you wonder?  Well you have clearly forgotten about the pigeons, my friends.  As the boy lies dying alone in a small monastery, he manages to… well, er, uh… expel and collect his sperm in a small glass vial that he attaches to the leg of his champion carrier pigeon.  The pigeon manages to lift off with its precious burden and flies bravely between whizzing bullets to the pigeon girl at the zoo, who understands immediately that the bird’s return means that a) the pigeon boy is dead and b) that the vial contains his sperm.  (As an aside, does this remind anyone else of the Monty Python sketch, “what is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?”) Scrambling madly through the zoo lab in search for a spoon and a syringe, she flops on her back and inseminates herself.  The rest of the story unfolds with relative ease.  It’s too bad, really, since the book is otherwise well written, the story lines are interesting, and the characters are vibrant and engaging.  I had intended to give it a 3-star rating up until this (dare-I-say-it?) seminal moment in the story.  Alas, after such revelations, I found it hard to take seriously anymore. 

LEBANON: An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine  **

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and National Book Award.  The story flows from the memories of 70-year-old Aaliya, an endearing feisty blue-haired heroine who dared to live a modern and independent life in the constrictive society of 1970s civil-war Lebanon.  Her salvation from both the war and the society that condemns her lifestyle is literature.  The novel combines all the ingredients needed to create an appealing story for modern women and lovers of literature and history; me, me, and me.  But I didn’t love it.  After a beautiful start (and I recommended it enthusiastically to a few friends after a promising first quarter), the book gets bogged down in Aaliya’s literary reviews and ponderings to the point that the plot disappears completely and we feel like we’ve accidentally wandered into an academic treatise where the author tries to dazzle us with the breadth and depth of her knowledge.  Towards the end it was simply a painful slog to finish. 

MEDITERRANEAN overview: On the Shores of the Mediterranean by Eric Newby ***

Fans of travel literature should feel their hearts skip a beat with excitement when they see the name Eric Newby, author of the classic works A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush and The Last Grain Race.  Newby sailed a 4-masted schooner from the UK to Australia in 1938, climbed the Nuristan mountains of Afghanistan, was a prisoner of war, escaped from his concentration camp and was recaptured, returned later to marry the Slovenian woman who hid him during his escape, and spent some years working with his father in a women’s high-fashion business.  For most of his career, when he wasn’t traveling himself, he served as travel editor of The Observer.  With such credentials, it’s impossible not to be enthralled by his sometimes hysterical recollections of traveling around the Mediterranean basin, clockwise from Naples, in the 1980s.  In the acknowledgements in the front of the book, Newby thanks Colonel Muammar Kaddafi for hosting them during their jaunt through Libya.  While some passages are dry and dip too deeply into the historical landscape for my tastes, the book as a whole is a fantastic read and is an essential companion to the fiction from each country that I’ve been reading.

MEDITERRANEAN overviews, continued:  The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean by John Julius Norwich ****, and The Pillars of Hercules *1/2  by Paul Theroux.

The Middle Sea is essential reading, the bible of all things Mediterranean, and despite the comprehensive historical coverage, very engaging and readable.  After reading Norwich and Newby, The Pillars of Hercules by Theroux struck me as the personal ramblings of an often poorly-informed traveler content to offer up summaries of a place based on meeting a few local characters in a bar.  His goal is to write a book and cover as much ground as possible as quickly as possible.  Perhaps this approach is meant to offer a snapshot in time and many critics loved the book.  I found it annoying and didn’t learn anything useful or interesting about the Med from it.  It’s all about him and his insights. Pass.

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Update 1: A Year of Reading the Med

Several weeks ago, I began a project of reading at least 1 book from each of the 23 Mediterranean countries. The start of the project taught me a lot about what I read and why.  This next phase of summarizing what I’ve read is also teaching me that literary criticism is a serious profession requiring skills that I don’t have.  I thought of just sticking to a star system, but in the interest of making this project more of a challenge, I’ve decided to push myself a bit further to try to give you enough information to decide if the book might interest you or not.  Here it goes:

Star system:

* = don’t bother

** = okay 

*** =  good 

**** = excellent !

FRANCE:  Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan.  ***

A coming of age novel set in the French Riviera of the 1950s, Bonjour Tristesse (Hello Sadness) follows a young woman as she struggles to choose between a bohemian lifestyle or finishing her baccalaureate degree, and discovers with tragic consequences her own power to manipulate the adults around her.    

FRANCE: Granite Island: A Portrait of Corsica by Dorothy Carrington. ****

For those who know and love Corsica, this masterpiece of history, anthropology, archaeology, art history, architecture, linguistics, folk tales and travel literature from 1971 is essential reading.  Informative, entertaining, and lyrical, her love for the island and respect for the fast-disappearing Corsican peasant culture is documented over the 20 years she lived and worked there.  Reflections such as this abound: “I was to marvel at the command of words by those who can neither read nor write them.  But perhaps this was general in the days before universal education began mass-producing minds.  I have often wondered how far the Elizabethan writers were indebted to the virile, vivid speech of an illiterate majority.”  To read and re-read. 

SPAIN: A Heart so White by Javier Marias.  ****

This gem of a novel forces the reader to repeatedly ask whether actions are pure or cowardly, two competing interpretations of “white”.  Written in 1^st person prose voice similar to Gabriel Garcia Marquez or William Faulkner (e.g., stream-of-consciousness-punctuation-be-damned…but still very readable and even endearing), the story follows an interpreter – someone whose job depends on listening carefully and evaluating the meaning of words – as he learns about the dark past of his father.  And for those of you who have worked in the international arena, there are some hysterical passages about what interpreters think of UN assemblies and delegates !

ITALY:  If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler… by Italo Calvino.  *** ½

This novel (or is it 10 novels?) takes a mad, wild, fantastic look at what it means to read, to write, to be a reader, and to be a writer.  The disconcerting beginning quickly sparks to brilliance as the reader realizes what the author is doing, and the many laugh-out-loud twists and turns keep the pages turning.  That is, up until then end, where this reader got a little tired of the same tricks and began skimming some parts.  But the doldrums don’t last long and the end, where things come together in an unexpected way, is well worth pushing forward.  A great read for book lovers.

MALTA:  Ironfire by David Ball.  ****

This majestic fictional romp through Maltese history brings to life a formative period in Mediterranean history that covers the crusades, the knights of Malta, the Barbary coast pirates, and the Ottoman empire. Reminiscent of the great historical fiction works of James Michener, Ironfire is an intelligent swash-buckling page turner.  Brain candy with a little bit of fiber.  Enjoy ! 

ALBANIA:  Chronicle in Stone by Ismail Kadare. ****

Winner of the 1995 Man Booker International Prize.  A young Albanian boy leads us through the daily life in his village during the Second World War as Albania is alternatively occupied by the Italians, the Greeks, the Italians again, then the Greeks again, then the Italians return, then the Greeks make a short re-appearance, and then the Germans show up.  Folklore, village life, colourful characters, the incomprehensible savagery of war and the magic of childhood create a kaleidoscope of life in a critical period of history. 

GREECE:  Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis * ½

Lest ye think I loved everything I read recently, I give you Zorba the Greek.  If you think the meaning of life can be boiled down to eat, drink, screw, and dance, Zorba is your man.  If, however, you are looking for more out of life or out of a book, don’t look here.  Do yourself a favour and watch the movie instead.  At least there are some great songs there.

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A Year of Reading the Med

I don’t know many live-aboard sailors who are not avid readers.  There is a lot of down-time in the sailing life, from days pinned down by bad weather to simply looking for some meaningful way to spend the hours between dinner and bedtime.  (Or, as many of our early-rising crew members have found, the hours between the time THEY wake up and the time WE wake up, somewhere around the crack of 9 if we have our way...)

From our friends over at The Cynical Sailor and His Salty Sidekick, we were recently introduced to the “Around the World in 80 Books” challenge.  The idea is to read 80 books from different countries, from A to Z.  This all started with UK writer Ann  Morgan and her “A Year of Reading the World” project.   As I am already a fan of armchair travelling, I love the idea and have accepted the challenge (with important modifications). 

I first tallied up my country list based on things I’ve already read.  This exercise pointed out some interesting facts and conundrums for me.  While I’ve covered 29 countries (and every letter except O, Q, W, Y, and Z… there is no X country), I realized that I am woefully ignorant of Spanish and South American literature (excluding Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Paulo Coelho, whom I assume everyone has read anyway, right?).  I also prefer historical fiction that gives a strong sense of place and time, but many of these books are written by outsiders; for example, an English author who writes about Malta, rather than reading something written by a Maltese author.  And then there are the books written by an author from a particular country that have nothing at all to do with the country itself.  Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery isn’t about Italy (the author’s origin) and Prague only plays a minor role in the story.  It’s a fabulous book, but hard to classify in the framework of this game.

Once you start scratching the surface of this challenge and imposing some guidelines on yourself to follow the spirit of the exercise, the task becomes quite daunting.  One of the official guidelines is that you must finish a book you start.  I’m throwing this one straight into the trash heap.  Life’s too short and there are too many great things to read to adhere to this rule.  And besides, it would be too bad to feel like you’ve dismissed the literary merit of a whole country because you didn’t like one book. 

But I’m imposing some other rules, lest you think I’m taking the easy road.  If I read a book about a country written by an outsider, I will also try to read a book written by a native of the country (bravely keeping in mind the aforementioned safety valve of chucking it in the bin if I don’t like it).  While the books don’t have to be historical fiction, it should evoke the place and lifestyle that influence the story.  I’m also not wedded to fiction as there are some fantastic travelogues out there.  Where possible (which is to say, where interesting to me) I will try to read “modern classics” or something on someone’s list of “things you should read if you think you’re well-read”.                  

And lastly, because the world is a big place, I am starting my assault on the Mediterranean countries.  We’ll be sailing down to the Med next year and will spend the next 3? 4? 5? years there.  What better way to inform, plan, dream ?

Depending on who’s doing the counting, there are 23 countries and/or autonomous provinces in the Med (proceeding clockwise):  Gibraltar, Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Malta, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco.  I’m also including a general Med category to include the classic “The Middle Sea” by John Julius Norwich and “The Pillars of Hercules” by Paul Theroux.  Here is my DRAFT list of possible reads, with a CRY FOR SUGGESTIONS from you, dear readers. 

Gibraltar  A Vision of Battlements – Anthony Burgess

Spain  2666 – Roberto Bolano; The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon;  A Heart So White or The Infatuations – Javier Marias;  HELP !!  Missing Mediterranean setting / ocean theme.  Balearic islands?

France  Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan ; Granite Island: A Portrait of Corsica – Dorothy Carrington ; Patrick Modiano (Prix Nobel 2014) – Rue des boutiques obscures (set in Rome) … good excuse to read the latest Nobel winner from my adopted home country…

Monaco  Loser takes all – Graham Greene

Italy  Ocean Sea - Alessandro Baricco;  If on a winter’s night a traveller… -  Italo Calvino

Malta  Ironfire – David Ball  HELP !  Need Maltese Writer or Travelogue !

Slovenia  Cette nuit je l’ai vu - Drago Jancar  (Prix Medici)

Croatia  The Ministry of Pain - Dubravka Ugresic;  Our man in Iraq – Robert Perisic

Bosnia Herzegovina  The Lazarus Project – Aleksandar Hemon

Montenegro  The Coming – Andrej Nikolaidis

Albania  Chronicle in Stone  or  Broken April – Ismail Kadare

Greece   Birds without Wings and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres (Covers Greece and Turkey);  Zorba the Greek – Nikos Kazantzakis (set in Greece and Crete); Eleni – Nicolas Gage

Turkey  The Time Regulation Institute – Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar;  Istanbul - Orhan Pamuk

Cyprus  Gregory and other award-winning stories – Panos Ioannides

Syria   Damascus Nights – Rafik Schami

Lebanon  An Unnecessary Woman – Rabih Alameddine

Israel  From Beirut to Jerusalem – Thomas Friedman;  A Pigeon and a Boy – Meir Shalev

Palestine  Mornings in Jenin – Susan Abulhawa; I Shall Not Hate – Izzeldin Abuelaish

Egypt  The Map of Love – Ahdaf Soueif (Booker Prize Finalist); Cairo Trilogy – Naguib Mahfouz (Nobel Prize); Beer in the Snooker Club – Waguih Ghali

Libya  In the Country of Men – Hisham Matar

Tunisia  L’Immoraliste – Andre Gide; Return to Dar Al-Basha – Nasr;  Les Trois Graces – Attia

Algeria  Ce que le jour doit a la nuit – Khadra ;  The Rabbi’s Cat – Sfar (GREAT movie !)

Morocco  Au Pays – Tahar Ben Jalloun ; The Spider’s House and The Sheltering Sky -  Paul Bowles; La Nuit Sacrée / L’enfant de sable - Tahar Ben Jalloun

Mediterranean  The Middle Sea – John Julius Norwich;  The Pillars of Hercules – Paul Theroux

Happy reading, and send in those suggestions !

Update 1 here.

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