One of my favourite guilty pleasures is to read a novel set in the city I’m visiting whenever I travel abroad. Good fiction might not be as practical as a Trip Advisor guide, but it does help to immerse you in your destination – especially if you’re stuck in business conferences and hotel rooms the whole time.
With that in mind, here are 150 award-winning books set in 150 countries – from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
The graphic below comes from the editing, proofreading and manuscript evaluation site Global English Editing. It attempts to provide a checklist of the most iconic books set in almost every country on Earth. The options range from classic poetry and 18th century swashbucklers to modern memoirs and dramas.
For Australia, Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet was chosen, a 1991 novel described as “a multigenerational saga full of desperation, hope, sorrow, and joy”. Personally, we would have plumped for either Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country or Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, although maybe those are a bit bleak for touristy reading.
Here is the infographic. For a brief synopsis of each book, head to Global English Editing’s blog post. (We’ve also included the full list below.)
- Afghanistan: The Kite Runner
- Albania: Broken April
- Algeria: The Plague
- Angola: Good Morning, Comrades
- Antigua: A Small Place
- Argentina: Ficciones
- Armenia: Passage to Ararat
- Australia: Cloudstreet
- Austria: Radetsky March
- The Bahamas: Wind from the Carolinas
- Bangladesh: A Golden Age
- Barbados: Song for Night
- Belarus: Voices from Chernobyl
- Belgium: War and Turpentine
- Belize: On Lizards, Heroes, and Passion
- Bhutan: The Circle of Karma
- Bolivia: American Visa
- Bosnia: The Bridge on the Drina
- Botswana: When Rain Clouds Gather
- Brazil: The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
- Brunei: Devil of a State
- Bulgaria: Under the Yoke
- Burma: Saving Fish from Drowning
- Cambodia: First They Killed My Father
- Cameroon: Dog Days: An Animal Chronicle
- Canada: The Blind Assassin
- Chad: Told by Starlight in Chad
- Chile: The House of the Spirits
- China: Romance of the Three Kingdoms
- Colombia: One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Costa Rica: The Lonely Men’s Island
- Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast): The Bitter Side of Sweet
- Croatia: The Return of Philip Latinowicz
- Cuba: The Old Man and the Sea
- Cyprus: Othello
- Czechia: I Served the King of England
- Democratic Republic of the Congo: The Poisonwood Bible
- Denmark: Beowulf
- Dominica: Black and White Sands
- The Dominican Republic: The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- Ecuador: The Villagers
- Egypt: Palace Walk
- El Salvador: Bitter Grounds
- Equatorial Guinea: By Night the Mountain Burns
- Ethiopia: Cutting for Stone
- Finland: Under the North Star
- France: The Three Musketeers
- Georgia: The Knight in the Panther’s Skin
- Germany: Faust
- Ghana: No Sweetness Here and Other Stories
- Greece: Zorba the Greek
- Grenada: Pynter Bender
- Guatemala: Men of Maize
- Guinea: The Radiance of the King
- Guyana: Palace of the Peacock
- Haiti: The Comedians
- Honduras: Cipote
- Hong Kong: A Many-Splendoured Thing
- Hungary: Fatelessness
- Iceland: The Sagas of Icelanders
- India: The White Tiger
- Indonesia: This Earth of Mankind
- Iran: My Uncle Napoleon
- Iraq: The Long Way Back
- Ireland: Ulysses
- Israel: Panther in the Basement
- Italy: The Name of the Rose
- Jamaica: Wide Sargasso Sea
- Japan: The Tale of Genji
- Jordan: The Language of Baklava
- Kenya: Weep Not, Child
- Kosovo: Travels in Blood and Honey: Becoming a Beekeeper in Kosovo
- Kuwait: Small Kingdoms
- Kyrgyzstan: Jamila
- Laos: The Coroner’s Lunch
- Latvia: The Earth is Singing
- Lebanon: The Prophet
- Lesotho: Chaka
- Libya: The Bleeding of the Stone
- Liechtenstein: Seven Years in Tibet: My Life Before, During and After
- Lithuania: Vilnius Poker
- Madagascar: Voices from Madagascar
- Malawi: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
- Malaysia: The Garden of Evening Mists
- Mali: The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu
- Mexico: Pedro Páramo
- Monaco: Loser Takes All
- Mongolia: The Blue Sky
- Montenegro: The Mountain Wreath
- Morocco: The Sand Child
- Mozambique: Sleepwalking Land
- Nepal: Palpasa Cafe
- Netherlands: The Diary of Anne Frank
- New Zealand: The Matriarch
- Nicaragua: Azul…
- Nigeria: Things Fall Apart
- North Korea: The Orphan Master’s Son
- Norway: Hunger
- Oman: The Turtle of Oman
- Pakistan: The Reluctant Fundamentalist
- Palestine: Mornings in Jenin
- Panama: The Tailor of Panama
- Papua New Guinea: The Crocodile
- Paraguay: I, the Supreme
- Peru: Who Killed Palomino Molero?
- Philippines: Noli Me Tángere
- Poland: Pan Tadeusz
- Portugal: Blindness
- Romania: Dracula
- Russia: War and Peace
- Rwanda: Running the Rift
- Samoa: Where We Once Belonged
- Saudi Arabia: Girls of Riyadh
- Senegal: So Long a Letter
- Serbia: Dictionary of the Khazars
- Sierra Leone: A Long Way Gone
- Singapore: The Singapore Grip
- Slovakia: Rivers of Babylon
- Slovenia: Alamut
- Somalia: The Orchid of Lost Souls
- South Africa: Cry, the Beloved Country
- South Korea: The Vegetarian
- Spain: Don Quixote
- Sri Lanka: Anil’s Ghost
- Sudan: Season of Migration to the North
- Swaziland: Weeding the Flowerbeds
- Sweden: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
- Switzerland: Heidi
- Syria: The Dark Side of Love
- Taiwan: Crystal Boys
- Tajikistan: Hurramabad
- Tanzania: Desertion
- Thailand: The Bridge Over the River Kwai
- Tonga: Tales of the Tikongs
- Trinidad and Tobago: A House for Mr. Biswas
- Tunisia: The Pillar of Salt
- Turkey: My Name is Red
- Turkmenistan: The Tale of Aypi
- Uganda: Abyssinian Chronicles
- Ukraine: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
- United Arab Emirates: The Sand Fish
- United Kingdom: Pride and Prejudice
- United States of America: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- Uruguay: The Invisible Mountain
- Uzbekistan: Chasing the Sea
- Venezuela: Doña Bárbara
- Vietnam: Paradise of the Blind
- Yemen: A Land without Jasmine
- Zambia: A Cowrie of Hope
- Zimbabwe: The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm
[Via Global English Editing]
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