In the 'journey around the world' in books, I'm wrapping up my sojourn in South Africa: Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, the essays in Apartheid collected by Alex La Guma, and Albert Luthuli's Let My People Go all being read, I only still need to finish the first volume of Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom. (I've reached the stage of that autobiography where, as a fledgling lawyer trying to fit into his professional sphere without making waves, Mandela still decides to become politically active, joining meetings with Communists and other groups who are striving to end apartheid.)
South Korea is next. Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 felt so cheerless at the first reading that I've decided not to reread it. The opening pages of Kyung Sook-Shin's historical tale The Court Dancer — about a Korean courtesan who marries a French nobleman — were good, but I wanted something different. Aside from Korean folktales available in online book archives in a colonial-era English translation, it looked like there were mostly books about North Korea or about 'comfort women' during the Second World War or other depressing books to choose from in my online book subscription website. And perhaps South Korean manhwa is a more promising genre for lighthearted topics than literary fiction.
In the end, I chose One Spoon On This Earth in an excellent translation — stylistically speaking, at least; of course it would require a detailed knowledge of Korean to know about the technical accuracy. It is written by Ki-young Hyun, and fictionalizes — during the early chapters, at least — a childhood during the post-WWII occupation of Korea. The tyranny of Japan and the war itself were history; but starvation, a cholera epidemic, the destructive effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on home life, a tug-of-war between the occupying authorities (American and Korean) and the Koreans themselves, and battles over Communism, partition, and independence ensued.
Likely the list of 'trigger warnings' for this book is long enough to be a small book in itself.
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It has been hard to find Ukrainian books to read after the South Korean books are done. For example, Joseph Roth may have been born in the Ukrainian portion of Galicia, but to me it seems highly unlikely he'd have considered himself Ukrainian. Nikolai Gogol's books also feel like an ambiguous case. Let's see.
But if I step back and revisit countries with under 60,000,000 inhabitants:
A French colleague of mine with Algerian family members has suggested Algerian books to read — she also offered to read Les Misérables by Victor Hugo with me in tandem.
I might also finally track down a copy of the book by a Taiwanese author that another colleague's wife recommended to me a year ago: The Silver Bicycle.
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Yesterday I cycled to Dussmann Kulturkaufhaus, on a dozy summer weekend afternoon with remarkably few tourists roaming the Friedrichstraße, and browsed in comfort in the English-language books department. In the end I emerged with two novels — Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half and Imbolo Mbue's Behold the Dreamers — and a travel memoir-cookbook — Ripe Figs by Yasmin Khan.
Lastly, my to-be-read pile still includes the 'best of 2020' books and related books from the National Public Radio list. Five hours are left of the Stamped From the Beginning audiobook, and I've made a little progress in Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker.
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| Cover of Ripe Figs, via Bloomsbury Publishing |
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