Because Cleveland Folks Have Enough Problems . . . More World Cup!

Over at Words Without Borders, Andy Tepper has a great post listing interesting books to read from all participating World Cup countries:

There are some interesting books, even more so perhaps this year because the Cup is being held in Africa for the first time. But I thought it might also be fun to use the idea of the World Cup, now in its final days, to kick off a discussion of some recent (or not-so-recent) books that might otherwise be overlooked. So I started thinking of a list of some of my favorite novels and collections from Argentina, Spain, Nigeria, Brazil . . . and on and on. Why did I do this? No special reason—I thought it might be fun, lord knows books could use more attention these days, and I had some time on my hands at work. But then I ran into countries such as Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, not to mention Paraguay and North Korea. What was I to do? (It would’ve been so much easier if Russia, Turkey, and the Czech Republic had qualified!)

His overall list is pretty solid: Ivan Vladislavic’s Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked for South Africa (a book that I read as the WC started and ABSOLUTELY LOVED), Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi for England, Jenny Erpenbeck’s The Book of Words for Germany, Antonio Tabucchi’s Indian Nocturne for Italy, Augusto Roa Bastos’s I, the Supreme for Paraguay, Alejandro Zambra’s The Private Lives of Trees for Chile, and 26 other titles.

This is a difficult list to come up with, but I’m sure readers have other interesting suggestions. (Personally, I’d replace the Ogawa with Kobo Abe’s The Box Man because it’s so Beckett and yet so singular.) If you have additions, suggestions, etc., etc., you should post them below, or on the WWB blog. It would be fun to come up with a sort of short reading list of books from these countries . . .