My year reading a book from every country in the world | Ann Morgan

Summary

In this inspiring talk, the speaker shares her journey to diversify her reading habits by exploring literature from every UN-recognized country, including Taiwan, totaling 196. Initially shocked by her predominantly British and North American bookshelf, she embarked on a global reading quest during the London Olympics year. Facing challenges like limited English translations and unfamiliarity with foreign literature, she sought help online, connecting with strangers who generously supported her mission. Through this experience, she discovered the power of books to bridge cultural divides and the collective effort to bring the world's stories to life, ultimately enriching her perspective on global diversity and unity.

Takeaways

• 📚 The speaker discovered a cultural blind spot in their reading habits, realizing that their bookshelves were predominantly filled with books by British or North American authors, with little representation from other cultures.
• 🌏 In 2012, the speaker embarked on a global reading challenge to read a book from every UN-recognized country, including Taiwan, totaling 196 nations.
• 📈 The speaker highlighted the issue of limited book translations into English, with only around 4.5% of literary works published in the UK being translations, reflecting a similar situation in the English-speaking world.
• 🔍 The challenge of finding books from countries with little to no English literature involved seeking help from a global community through the speaker's blog.
• 🤝 The power of community and collaboration was evident as friends, colleagues, and strangers offered assistance in sourcing books from around the world.
• 🌐 The Internet played a crucial role in connecting the speaker with people who helped in the quest to read globally, showcasing the potential of technology to bridge cultural divides.
• 📬 Personal connections and even social media outreach to entities like the Panama Canal's Twitter account led to unique opportunities for accessing literature.
• 📖 Writers and translators from various countries shared their work with the speaker, including unpublished and self-published pieces, offering a glimpse into diverse literary worlds.
• 🤔 The experience of reading globally was both enlightening and challenging, prompting the speaker to reflect on their own cultural perspectives and the broader literary landscape.
• 🌟 The project transformed a list of countries into living entities with rich stories, highlighting the power of literature to humanize and connect people across the globe.
• 📚 The speaker's bookshelves now tell a story of global connection, cultural diversity, and the collective potential of humanity to share ideas and narratives.

Q & A

What realization did the speaker have about their bookshelf that led to a cultural shock?

The speaker realized that almost all the books on their bookshelf were by British or North American authors, with almost nothing in translation, indicating a significant cultural blind spot in their reading habits.

What was the speaker's goal for the year 2012?

The speaker's goal was to read a novel, short story collection, or memoir from every country in the world, using the year of the London Olympics as a time frame.

How many countries did the speaker decide to include in their reading project?

The speaker decided to include 196 countries, using the list of UN-recognized nations and adding Taiwan.

What percentage of literary works published in the UK are translations, and what does this indicate about the availability of foreign literature?

Only around 4.5 percent of literary works published in the UK are translations, indicating that a vast majority of foreign literature remains inaccessible to English-speaking readers.

How did the speaker address the challenge of finding books from countries with little or no commercially available literature in English?

The speaker sought help from people around the world through their blog, and in some cases, collaborated with authors and translators to access unpublished or self-published works.

What was the unexpected outcome of the speaker's appeal for help on their blog?

The unexpected outcome was the overwhelming response from friends, colleagues, and strangers who offered to help by suggesting books, conducting research, and even translating works for the speaker.

How did the speaker's project evolve from a personal endeavor to a collaborative one?

The project evolved as the speaker received help from various individuals who shared their knowledge, resources, and even their translations, turning the project into a collective effort to explore global literature.

What was the role of social media in the speaker's quest to read the world?

Social media played a crucial role by connecting the speaker with a global community of readers, authors, and translators, enabling them to share recommendations, resources, and even unpublished works.

Can reading one book from a country provide a comprehensive understanding of that country's culture?

While reading one book cannot provide a rounded picture of a country, the cumulative effect of reading diverse stories can offer insights into the richness, diversity, and complexity of different cultures.

How did the speaker's perspective on English-language literature change after their global reading project?

The speaker began to see the narrowness of much English-language literature compared to the richness offered by global literature, highlighting the importance of reading widely to gain a broader understanding of the world.

What is the speaker's hope for the future in terms of global reading and book translations?

The speaker hopes that more people will join them in reading widely, which would incentivize publishers to translate more books, enriching the literary experience for all.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Discovering Cultural Blind Spots in Reading Habits

The narrator starts by reflecting on the insight that one's bookshelves can reveal about their personality and interests. They recount a personal revelation that their book collection was predominantly from British and North American authors, with a glaring absence of works in translation. This discovery led to a sense of cultural oversight and motivated them to undertake a global reading challenge, aiming to read a book from every UN-recognized country, plus Taiwan, totaling 196. The endeavor was inspired by the international spirit of the London Olympics in 2012. The narrator faced practical challenges, such as fitting the reading into a busy schedule and the scarcity of English translations, particularly from non-Western countries. They admit to being a 'literary xenophobe' and decided to seek help by starting a blog to crowdsource reading suggestions.

05:03

🌏 The Power of Global Community in Literary Exploration

The narrator shares experiences of the global community's overwhelming support in their reading journey. People from around the world offered assistance, from conducting research to purchasing and sending books. This support was not limited to friends and colleagues but extended to strangers, exemplified by Rafidah from Kuala Lumpur, who sent books from Malaysia and Singapore. The narrator also highlights the challenges of accessing literature from countries with limited English translations, such as Panama, where they engaged with the Panama Canal's Twitter account to find a local author. Many authors and translators from various countries sent self-published works or unpublished manuscripts, enriching the narrator's understanding of diverse cultures. A particularly notable effort was made for São Tomé and Príncipe, where a group of volunteers collaboratively translated a book, demonstrating the project's transformative power from a personal weakness into a communal strength.

10:03

🌐 Books as Bridges: The Impact of Global Reading on Perspective

In the final paragraph, the narrator discusses the profound impact that reading globally had on their worldview. They acknowledge the limitations of understanding a country through a single book but emphasize how the collective stories brought countries to life, offering a richer, more diverse perspective on the world. The narrator's bookshelves and e-reader now symbolize the connectivity that books provide across various divides. They advocate for wider reading to encourage more translations and enrich our global understanding. The narrator concludes by expressing hope for the continuation of this journey and an invitation for others to join, highlighting the Internet's role in facilitating the sharing of stories and worldviews across the globe.

Keywords

💡Cultural Blind Spot

A cultural blind spot refers to an area of culture or cultural practices that one is unfamiliar with or has not been exposed to. In the video, the speaker discovers their own cultural blind spot when they realize that their bookshelves are filled predominantly with works by British or North American authors, with little representation from other cultures. This realization is a key moment that propels the speaker's journey to read more globally.

💡Global Reading

Global reading is the practice of reading literature from around the world, encompassing diverse cultures, languages, and perspectives. The speaker's project to read a book from every UN-recognized country exemplifies global reading. This concept is central to the video's theme, illustrating the speaker's commitment to broadening their literary horizons and challenging the dominance of Anglophone literature in their personal library.

💡Translation

Translation in this context refers to the process of rendering a literary work from one language into another, making it accessible to readers who do not speak the original language. The video discusses the limited percentage of books that are translated into English, highlighting the barriers that non-English literature faces in reaching a global audience. The speaker's quest involves seeking out translated works to diversify their reading experience.

💡Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan describes someone who is worldly, sophisticated, and familiar with many different cultures. The speaker initially identifies as cosmopolitan but later realizes that their reading habits do not reflect this self-perception. The term is used to contrast the speaker's initial self-image with the reality of their cultural exposure.

💡Literary Xenophobe

A literary xenophobe is someone who is unfamiliar with or resistant to literature from other cultures. The speaker uses this term to describe their initial state of ignorance regarding non-English literature. This self-identification is a key part of the narrative, as it underscores the speaker's motivation to overcome their limitations and engage with global literature.

💡UN-recognized Nations

UN-recognized Nations refer to the countries that are recognized by the United Nations as sovereign states. The speaker uses this list as a basis for their project, aiming to read from each of these nations. The term is significant as it sets the scope of the speaker's ambitious reading project, which includes adding Taiwan to the list, totaling 196 countries.

💡Blogging

Blogging is the activity of regularly sharing one's thoughts, experiences, and insights on a personal website or blog. The speaker mentions blogging as part of their project to document and share their journey of reading from around the world. Blogging serves as a platform for the speaker to engage with a wider audience and invite participation in their global reading endeavor.

💡Cultural Divide

Cultural divide refers to the differences and gaps between various cultures. In the video, the speaker discusses how books have the power to connect people across cultural divides. The term is used to emphasize the potential of literature to bridge gaps and foster understanding between diverse cultures.

💡Self-published Books

Self-published books are literary works that are published by the authors themselves, without the involvement of traditional publishing companies. The speaker mentions receiving self-published books and unpublished manuscripts from authors and translators, which allowed them to access literature that might not otherwise be available in English. This concept highlights the role of self-publishing in making diverse literature more accessible.

💡Unpublished Manuscripts

Unpublished manuscripts are literary works that have not been published. The speaker received such manuscripts from various authors and translators during their project. These manuscripts provided the speaker with unique insights into different cultures and narratives that are not commonly found in mainstream literature.

💡Joint Creative Endeavor

A joint creative endeavor refers to a collaborative project involving multiple individuals working together to achieve a creative goal. The speaker facilitated such an endeavor when they enlisted the help of volunteers to translate a book from São Tomé and Príncipe. This term illustrates the collective effort and community spirit that emerged from the speaker's project.

Highlights

The speaker realized a cultural blind spot in their reading habits, predominantly consisting of British and North American authors.

In 2012, the speaker embarked on a project to read a book from every UN-recognized country, including Taiwan, totaling 196 countries.

The challenge of finding and reading books in English from countries with limited or no English literature available.

The speaker's initiative to ask for help via a blog, ayearofreadingtheworld.com, to source international literature.

The overwhelming response from friends, colleagues, and strangers offering book recommendations and translations.

The kindness of a stranger from Kuala Lumpur who sent books from Malaysia and Singapore.

The surprising assistance from the Panama Canal's Twitter account in finding a Panamanian book.

The experience of reading unpublished translations and self-published works from authors worldwide.

A São Tomé and Príncipe book was translated collectively by volunteers after the speaker's online appeal.

The transformative power of books to broaden perspectives and challenge one's own thinking.

The speaker's newfound appreciation for the diversity and richness of world literature.

The project's demonstration of how the internet facilitates global sharing of stories and worldviews.

The potential for increased book translations if more people read widely, enriching the literary landscape.

The speaker's hope for continued global reading and the invitation for others to join in this endeavor.

The story of books' power to connect people across various divides, as seen on the speaker's bookshelves.

The conclusion that the speaker's initial limitation became a strength, leading to unique opportunities and discoveries.

Transcripts

It's often said that you can tell a lot about a person

by looking at what's on their bookshelves.

What do my bookshelves say about me?

Well, when I asked myself this question a few years ago,

I made an alarming discovery.

I'd always thought of myself as a fairly cultured,

cosmopolitan sort of person.

But my bookshelves told a rather different story.

Pretty much all the titles on them

were by British or North American authors,

and there was almost nothing in translation.

Discovering this massive, cultural blind spot in my reading

came as quite a shock.

And when I thought about it, it seemed like a real shame.

I knew there had to be lots of amazing stories out there

by writers working in languages other than English.

And it seemed really sad to think that my reading habits meant

I would probably never encounter them.

So, I decided to prescribe myself

an intensive course of global reading.

2012 was set to be a very international year for the UK;

it was the year of the London Olympics.

And so I decided to use it as my time frame

to try to read a novel, short story collection

or memoir from every country in the world.

And so I did.

And it was very exciting

and I learned some remarkable things

and made some wonderful connections

that I want to share with you today.

But it started with some practical problems.

After I'd worked out which of the many different lists of countries in the world

to use for my project,

I ended up going with the list of UN-recognized nations,

to which I added Taiwan,

which gave me a total of 196 countries.

And after I'd worked out how to fit reading and blogging

about, roughly, four books a week

around working five days a week,

I then had to face up to the fact that I might even not be able

to get books in English from every country.

Only around 4.5 percent of the literary works published

each year in the UK are translations,

and the figures are similar for much of the English-speaking world.

Although, the proportion of translated books published

in many other countries is a lot higher.

4.5 percent is tiny enough to start with,

but what that figure doesn't tell you

is that many of those books will come from countries

with strong publishing networks

and lots of industry professionals primed to go out and sell those titles

to English-language publishers.

So, for example, although well over 100 books are translated from French

and published in the UK each year,

most of them will come from countries like France or Switzerland.

French-speaking Africa, on the other hand,

will rarely ever get a look-in.

The upshot is that there are actually quite a lot of nations

that may have little or even no commercially available literature

in English.

Their books remain invisible to readers

of the world's most published language.

But when it came to reading the world,

the biggest challenge of all for me

was that fact that I didn't know where to start.

Having spent my life reading almost exclusively British

and North American books,

I had no idea how to go about sourcing and finding stories

and choosing them from much of the rest of the world.

I couldn't tell you how to source a story from Swaziland.

I wouldn't know a good novel from Namibia.

There was no hiding it --

I was a clueless literary xenophobe.

So how on earth was I going to read the world?

I was going to have to ask for help.

So in October 2011, I registered my blog,

ayearofreadingtheworld.com,

and I posted a short appeal online.

I explained who I was,

how narrow my reading had been,

and I asked anyone who cared to

to leave a message suggesting what I might read

from other parts of the planet.

Now, I had no idea whether anyone would be interested,

but within a few hours of me posting that appeal online,

people started to get in touch.

At first, it was friends and colleagues.

Then it was friends of friends.

And pretty soon, it was strangers.

Four days after I put that appeal online,

I got a message from a woman called Rafidah in Kuala Lumpur.

She said she loved the sound of my project,

could she go to her local English-language bookshop

and choose my Malaysian book and post it to me?

I accepted enthusiastically,

and a few weeks later,

a package arrived containing not one, but two books --

Rafidah's choice from Malaysia,

and a book from Singapore that she had also picked out for me.

Now, at the time, I was amazed

that a stranger more than 6,000 miles away

would go to such lengths to help someone

she would probably never meet.

But Rafidah's kindness proved to be the pattern for that year.

Time and again, people went out of their way to help me.

Some took on research on my behalf,

and others made detours on holidays and business trips

to go to bookshops for me.

It turns out, if you want to read the world,

if you want to encounter it with an open mind,

the world will help you.

When it came to countries

with little or no commercially available literature in English,

people went further still.

Books often came from surprising sources.

My Panamanian read, for example, came through a conversation

I had with the Panama Canal on Twitter.

Yes, the Panama Canal has a Twitter account.

And when I tweeted at it about my project,

it suggested that I might like to try and get hold of the work

of the Panamanian author Juan David Morgan.

I found Morgan's website and I sent him a message,

asking if any of his Spanish-language novels

had been translated into English.

And he said that nothing had been published,

but he did have an unpublished translation

of his novel "The Golden Horse."

He emailed this to me,

allowing me to become one of the first people ever

to read that book in English.

Morgan was by no means the only wordsmith

to share his work with me in this way.

From Sweden to Palau,

writers and translators sent me self-published books

and unpublished manuscripts of books

that hadn't been picked up by Anglophone publishers

or that were no longer available,

giving me privileged glimpses of some remarkable imaginary worlds.

I read, for example,

about the Southern African king Ngungunhane, who led the resistance

against the Portuguese in the 19th century;

and about marriage rituals in a remote village

on the shores of the Caspian sea in Turkmenistan.

I met Kuwait's answer to Bridget Jones.

(Laughter)

And I read about an orgy in a tree in Angola.

But perhaps the most amazing example

of the lengths that people were prepared to go to

to help me read the world,

came towards the end of my quest,

when I tried to get hold of a book from the tiny, Portuguese-speaking

African island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe.

Now, having spent several months trying everything I could think of to find

a book that had been translated into English from the nation,

it seemed as though the only option left to me

was to see if I could get something translated for me from scratch.

Now, I was really dubious

whether anyone was going to want to help with this,

and give up their time for something like that.

But, within a week of me putting a call out on Twitter and Facebook

for Portuguese speakers,

I had more people than I could involve in the project,

including Margaret Jull Costa, a leader in her field,

who has translated the work of Nobel Prize winner José Saramago.

With my nine volunteers in place,

I managed to find a book by a São Toméan author

that I could buy enough copies of online.

Here's one of them.

And I sent a copy out to each of my volunteers.

They all took on a couple of short stories from this collection,

stuck to their word, sent their translations back to me,

and within six weeks, I had the entire book to read.

In that case, as I found so often during my year of reading the world,

my not knowing and being open about my limitations

had become a big opportunity.

When it came to São Tomé and Príncipe,

it was a chance not only to learn something new

and discover a new collection of stories,

but also to bring together a group of people

and facilitate a joint creative endeavor.

My weakness had become the project's strength.

The books I read that year opened my eyes to many things.

As those who enjoy reading will know,

books have an extraordinary power to take you out of yourself

and into someone else's mindset,

so that, for a while at least,

you look at the world through different eyes.

That can be an uncomfortable experience,

particularly if you're reading a book

from a culture that may have quite different values to your own.

But it can also be really enlightening.

Wrestling with unfamiliar ideas can help clarify your own thinking.

And it can also show up blind spots

in the way you might have been looking at the world.

When I looked back at much of the English-language literature

I'd grown up with, for example,

I began to see how narrow a lot of it was,

compared to the richness that the world has to offer.

And as the pages turned,

something else started to happen, too.

Little by little,

that long list of countries that I'd started the year with, changed

from a rather dry, academic register of place names

into living, breathing entities.

Now, I don't want to suggest that it's at all possible

to get a rounded picture of a country simply by reading one book.

But cumulatively, the stories I read that year

made me more alive than ever before

to the richness, diversity and complexity of our remarkable planet.

It was as though the world's stories

and the people who'd gone to such lengths to help me read them

had made it real to me.

These days, when I look at my bookshelves

or consider the works on my e-reader,

they tell a rather different story.

It's the story of the power books have to connect us

across political, geographical, cultural, social, religious divides.

It's the tale of the potential human beings have to work together.

And, it's testament

to the extraordinary times we live in, where, thanks to the Internet,

it's easier than ever before

for a stranger to share a story, a worldview, a book

with someone she may never meet, on the other side of the planet.

I hope it's a story I'm reading for many years to come.

And I hope many more people will join me.

If we all read more widely, there'd be more incentive

for publishers to translate more books,

and we would all be richer for that.

Thank you.

(Applause)