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Help Wanted for an Olympic Challenge

abecedarian

abecedarian

Well-Known Member
Someone in the Bookcrossing forum had an interesting challenge: Read a book for every participating nation in the 2006 Olympic Games. I guess that could mean the book could either be about a particular nation, or by an author from this country. I thought it might be fun to try since I want to get out of my 'mostly white US citizens ' mode anyway. Since this forum is comprised of readers from all over, I thought I'd ask for reccomendations. Please keep in mind I'm a typical American with my two years of barely remembered high school Spanish..meaning I only read in English..
 
abecedarian said:
Someone in the Bookcrossing forum had an interesting challenge: Read a book for every participating nation in the 2006 Olympic Games.
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Either the person is very funny and is saying "don't read any books" or they are very stupid. The next Olympiad is in 2008.
 
abecedarian said:
...I want to get out of my 'mostly white US citizens ' mode anyway...
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I suspect there are a lot of readers who take a feeling of self-satisfation from thier hobby 'expanding the mind' and helping them to understand human nature more deeply; but who in reality tend to read about characters and cultures they are already familiar with. Something I've always found rather odd...

abecedarian said:
Since this forum is comprised of readers from all over, I thought I'd ask for reccomendations...
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I assume you want more off the beaten path places than America or France?
 
Kenny Shovel said:
I suspect there are a lot of readers who take a feeling of self-satisfation from thier hobby 'expanding the mind' and helping them to understand human nature more deeply; but who in reality tend to read about characters and cultures they are already familiar with. Something I've always found rather odd...

I assume you want more off the beaten path places than America or France?
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Yes please! BTW, I just got a pm from the poster on Bookcrossing. There are actually 202 countries sending atheletes this time!
 
Ok, I've had a look through my shelves for books from more 'off the beaten path' places. Deep breath, here we go:

Albania: Broken April by Ismal Kadare
Algeria: The Fall by Albert Camus
Czech Republic: Waiting for the Darkness, Waiting for the Light by Ivan Klima
Hungray: Under the Frog by Tibor Fischer
Iceland: The Fish Can Sing by Halldor Laxness
Nigeria: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Norway: Women at the pump by Knut Hamsun
Poland: Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz
Serbia: A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kiš
South Africa: Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Sri Lanka: Reef by Romesh Gunesekera
Taiwan: The Butcher's Wife by Li Ang
Ukraine: Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

and of course Graham Greene has set books in numerous countries:

Austria: The Third Man
Cuba: Our Man in Havana
Haiti: The Comedians
Mexico: The Power and the Glory
Panama: Getting to know the General
Sweden: England Made Me
Vietnam: The Quiet American

Ok, that's 20 to start you off. I'm fed up finding all these URL's...

Regards,

K-S
 
Kenny - I am impressed by your post! Great effort!

Thank you for those - I will look into some of the ones I haven't read.



PS I will add my "off the beaten path" books when I get home.
 
Hmm. I've got a lot of Caribbean stuff, but it's all at my mom's. I'll take a look there when I'm home next week. Hopefully she hasn't passed it all along yet.

One of my favorite authors to suggest is Rosario Ferre. She is from and writes about Puerto Rico. It obviously isn't a country, but they do field their own Olympic team.

Off the top of my head I can think of a few international authors (pretty much stuff I've read lately).

Italio Calvino was born in Cuba, lived most of his live in Italy.
[SIZE=-1][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1]Kamala Markandaya was born in India, but also lived in Britain.
[/SIZE][/FONT][/SIZE]Alexander McCall Smith was born in Zimbabwe and has lived in Scotland and Botswana.
Umberto Eco is Italian.
Arturo Pérez-Reverte is Spanish.
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1]Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti and now lives in the US.


I know I can come up with more, but it'll take me a while.
[/SIZE][/FONT]
 
For New Zealand, you could try Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera. I'm guessing that it would be reasonably easy to find because of the success of the movie.
 
Stewart said:
You never said Winter Olympics. :p
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In Canada the winter olympics are considered by many to be THE Olympics. The other ones are 'The Summer Games'. Being Australian it's obviously the opposite for us.

By the way, don't forget the Commonwealth Games coming up in March :D

I figured I'd add a few cents in here for Australian books:

- Tim Winton - "Cloud Street" or "The Riders".

- Jessica Anderson - "Tirra Lirra by the River" is *fantastic*. One of my favourite books :)
 
100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (or anything else by him) for Columbia
The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer for Germany

I'm currently running through several novels by Chinese authors, I'm sure there will be a recommendation soon.
 
Thanks for all the great suggestions! In reading more about this challenge, I discovered the other bookcrosser is spreading this out over about 30 months, to be done by the end of the Summer Games of 2008. I'm grateful. Imagine trying to to this by the end of February 2006:eek: I'll try to find a link with the full list of nations. The list I got in a pm is 5 pages long! 53 nations from Africa, 15 from Oceana, 44 from Asia, 48 from Europe, and 42 from the Americas:cool:
 
Here's a link to the nations that participated in the 2004 games. The official list for 2008 doesn't exist yet, but it should be fairly close, at least according to Wikipedia.
 
I'm glad to see I already have a couple of the books/authors suggested so far:
Cry, The Beloved Country
Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Danticat
and thanks to the salecart at my library, I have the second and third Ladies Detective Agency books. But since I haven't read the first, I'll have to pull out my library card and take care of it that way!
 
Just a few from my bookshelf. All from europe so not that exotic.

Norway: Knut Hamsun - Hunger
Czech: Karel Čapek - War with the newts.
Germany: Siegfried Lenz - The german lesson
Sweden: Per Olov Enquist - The royal physicians visit
Denmark(/Norway): Ludvig Holberg - Jeppe of the Hill.
Austria: Stefan Zweig - The royal game
Spain: Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
Russia/Ukraine: Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls
Poland: Stanislaw Lem - Solaris
Holland: Anne Frank - The diary of Anne Frank
 
Zolipara said:
Just a few from my bookshelf. All from europe so not that exotic.

Norway: Knut Hamsun - Hunger
Czech: Karel Čapek - War with the newts.
Germany: Siegfried Lenz - The german lesson
Sweden: Per Olov Enquist - The royal physicians visit
Denmark(/Norway): Ludvig Holberg - Jeppe of the Hill.
Austria: Stefan Zweig - The royal game
Spain: Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
Russia/Ukraine: Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls
Poland: Stanislaw Lem - Solaris
Holland: Anne Frank - The diary of Anne Frank
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Hey, I'm from a small town in Kansas, every place on your list is exotic to me;) My dh and I plot our trips into Wichita, and it's just a 20 minute drive:rolleyes: We joke about getting away to Newton..a little tiny city north of Wichita and known for its dullness.
Anyway, thanks for the list. What I'm quickly learning as I'm looking for works from the various nations, is that this won't be just a one-time project. How does one choose just ONE book to represent any country on the list? This is gonna be fun!
 
abecedarian said:
How does one choose just ONE book to represent any country on the list? This is gonna be fun!
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Its pretty much impossible to choose one book to represent the country, but its possible to just mention one good book written by an author from that country.
 
While you're talking about limited English translations, I found a site with a long list of authors from Soviet Georgia (just to name one example) and have had little luck finding these people's work in English. Thank God for cut and paste or I'd still be typing some of these names in the search bar at amazon. Is there a better way to find some of these people? Amazon has links for some nationalities, but not nearly all. I found some wonderful sites for Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders however. Picking just one seems so unfair, so I doubt if I do.


I wish I could ask Santa for a multi-lingual decoder ring for Christmas!
 
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