Stay Curious. Stay Connected.
MailNewsletters♡Donate Now
Sign up
*
Password must be at least 8 characters and contain one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number and one symbol
Already have an account?
Sign in to your profile
Forgot Password?
New to MPR News?
Welcome back
to news
for you
Reset Password

Enter the username on file and we'll send you a code to reset your password.

Still require assistance or not sure what your User Name is?
Welcome back
to news
for you
Email Verification

A verification code has been emailed to

Still awaiting the code?
Tracy Mumford

The woman who read one book from every country in the world

Read globally
Where to next? Add a global touch to your reading list.
Seth Wenig | AP file

Go Deeper.

Create an account or log in to save stories.

Like this?

Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.

Every week, The Thread tackles your book questions, big and small. Ask a question now.

This week's question: Where can I find good global reading recommendations?

Four years ago, Ann Morgan took a look at her shelves and saw a lot of books — a lot of books — from authors in the English-speaking world. Despite being well-traveled, her reading list did not reflect her global interests.

"I was a literary xenophobe," she writes.

So she set herself a lofty goal: Read one book from every country in the world in one year. That worked out to be 196 books, working from the list of U.N.-recognized countries.

But how do you know what to read from Lesotho? Or Turkmenistan? Or Suriname? Morgan put out a call for recommendations on her blog, and global readers shared their favorites from around the world.

It was a wordy year, filled with memoirs, classics, folk tales, short stories and unknown gems.

After checking all 196 countries off her list, Morgan wrote a book about the experience: "The World Between Two Covers." She describes the narratives from Kuwait, Togo and Greenland that entranced her, and the perspectives from Switzerland, Taiwan and Romania that she'd never read before.

Her goal highlighted the lack of books in translation available in the U.S. According to a 2012 article from The Economist:

When it comes to international literature, English readers are the worst-served in the Western world. Only 3% of the books published annually in America and Britain are translated from another language; fiction's slice is less than 1%.

If you are looking to expand your reading list, take a recommendation (or 100) from Morgan.

Reading around the world: A book for every country

The map below, from TED, shows Morgan's year-long reading list.