Dear reader, are your shelves heaving under the weight of books by dead white folks? Do your eyes glaze over at the mention of foreign fiction? Is your reading diet missing the vibrant flavours of stories from Africa, Asia and Latin America? Restricting your reading to novels from Europe and North America is like going to an all-you-can-eat Mexican buffet and just eating tortillas. Why do that?
I have been getting to know about countries in the global south through literature. Being an intrepid traveller, current events addict and avid reader led me inexorably to read books from around the world. The book that most reeled me in to the ability of literature to open the door to another country was Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, a dazzling, magic-realist ride through Colombia’s fortunes and misfortunes. Eventually, a cocktail of wonder, wishfulness and wanderlust inspired me to write a book about the joy of seeing the world through books.
