Reading the World

While browsing through a few sites in my Bookmarks list, I discovered a new reading program developed by a consortium of book publishers devoted to encouraging the reading of non-English literary works in translation. Called Reading the World, this consortium has developed a list of 25 works spanning the globe, from Portugal to China, from Turkey to Lebanon, to celebrate our rich global literary heritage and the new books that will serve to enrich it.

In June, Words Without Borders will be launching its series of related reading guides to help readers from the US and across the globe to start reading clubs based on these works. And while this blog traditionally has concentrated on speculative fiction, I myself read extensively outside of genre and therefore, time and money depending, I plan on reading 1-2 of these books in the coming months and reviewing them here. Hopefully, there'll be much of interest to all sorts of literature fans and perhaps some questions can be asked and discussions generated here and elsewhere regarding these books and others.