April-June 2024: Landlocked countries

We had read around most big bodies of water and we will still revisit them when we hit the Island countries later this year but in Q2 we are going to visit the countries that don't have direct access to an ocean or a sea. Some of them have a pretty big coastline but their "Sea" is actually a lake (the Caspian Sea countries: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) and some of them are not just landlocked but all their neighbors are also landlocked (Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan).

There are a total of 44 landlocked countries - 2 of them in the New World (Bolivia and Paraguay) and 42 in the Old World. 3 more de-facto states (Kosovo, Pridnestrovie (Transnistria) and South Ossetia) and one territory (West Bank) may be added to that list if one happens to pass though any of them in the next 3 months in their literary journey.

So please chime in and let us know what you plan to read, what you had read from these countries or what you are already reading. More updates to follow in the next days - but for now - welcome to the Q2 thread of Reading Globally!

The Americas

Only 2 countries ended up without access to the World Ocean:

- Bolivia (neighbors: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Peru)
The Fat Man from La Paz collects 20 stories from the country.
http://thelatinoauthor.com/countries/literature/bolivian-literature/ has some more ideas about authors from the country

- Paraguay (neighbors: Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil)
http://thelatinoauthor.com/countries/literature/literary-authors-of-paraguay/ for some ideas

I am not sure how much is available in English - so if someone has any recommendations, please do not hesitate.

Europe

There are 14 landlocked countries in Europe:

5 of the 6 continental micro-states (the 6th, Monaco, managed to end up on the water):
Andorra
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
San Marino
Vatican City

5 Central (some more Western than Central) European states:

Austria
Czech Republic
Hungary
Slovakia
Switzerland

4 Eastern European states (all of them are ex-USSR or ex-Yugoslavia):

Belarus
Macedonia
Moldova
Serbia

Africa

Africa has 16 landlocked countries:

Botswana
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Central African Republic
Chad
Ethiopia
Eswatini (former Swaziland)
Lesotho
Malawi
Mali
Niger
Rwanda
South Sudan
Uganda
Zambia
Zimbabwe

Asia

Asia has 12:

7 ex-USSR countries:
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan

5 The rest of them (I need a better name for this group):

Afghanistan
Bhutan
Laos
Mongolia
Nepal

I will continue to update the top posts this and next week, adding example works and notes about the literature of the different countries (work got a bit crazy so did not have a chance to do my research this week) but I will open the thread for anyone who wants to chime in or start planning.

Thanks, Annie!

I’ve picked up The railway by Hamid Ismailov, from Uzbekistan, I’m hoping to get to that in the next few weeks. Back in Holland I’ve got I the supreme (Paraguay) on the pile, maybe I’ll get to that at last.

I’ve read a lot by Austrian writers (e.g. Thomas Bernhard, Ilse Aichinger, Adalbert Stifter, Christoph Ransmayr, Marlen Haushofer, to throw out a few names off the top of my head). There are suggestions for writers from Liechtenstein and Luxembourg in the “small nations” theme read from a few years ago.

…and here goes, a first book from Uzbekistan:

The Railway (1997,2006) by Hamid Ismailov (Uzbekistan, UK, 1954- ) translated from Russian by Robert Chandler

  

A complicated novel, telling the intersecting but sometimes contradictory stories of a large group of characters in a small railway town north of Tashkent between about 1900 and 1980, interleaved with the story of an unnamed character just referred to as “the boy”. The stories are often ribald and usually involve at least a hint of magic realism, and the point of view is always that of a Muslim, Uzbek observer, looking with slight puzzlement at western civilisation and the Soviet project.

Ismailov says in an interview with the translator included as an afterword here that he wanted to contrast the regimented, hierarchical, Soviet way of looking at the world — obviously symbolised here by the railway — with the unprejudiced, fluid, Sufi-like gaze of the innocent boy. Ismailov takes no prisoners either in his social and political satire or in his brutally matter-of-fact descriptions of sex and violence, so this definitely isn’t for everyone, but it is a quite remarkable book, and often very funny indeed, even in places where you had rather it wasn’t… Certainly another one that invites a re-read to get the most out of it.

Alot of the books we read for the Asia challenge would fit with the five stans the day lasts more than a hundred years was one of my fave having trouble finding others, but a non fiction that i found fascinating was Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan by Erika Fatland

For Bolivia:
You Glow in the Dark by Liliana Colanzi
Affections by Rodrigo Hasbún
American Visa by Juan de Recacoechea

Paraguay:
I, the Supreme by Augusto Roa Bastos

Hungary. Although landlocked, it does of course have an important avenue to the sea in the Danube, one of Europe’s big international rivers.

Magda Szabó was one of the most successful Hungarian novelists of the communist era, but not very well known in English until the translation of The door became a big hit about fifteen years ago. Translator Len Rix has been working his way through her back-catalogue since then; I think this is the fourth of her novels I’ve read.

The Fawn (1959; English 2023) by Magda Szabó (Hungary, 1917-2007), translated by Len Rix

  

Narrator Eszter grows up before and during WWII in an impoverished former bourgeois family in a provincial town, where she has to help her parents make ends meet by giving extra lessons to her classmates for cash. Her resentment in life is focused on the lovely, rich Angéla, daughter of a judge, who infuriatingly sees Eszter as a good friend. Angéla never discovers that it was Eszter who was responsible for the death of her pet fawn. In later life they come across each other again, when Eszter has become a famous actor in the state theatre, and Angéla is a prominent party member. The whole novel is a monologue by Eszter, addressed to a lover whose identity we only discover towards the end of the story.

Clever, unsentimental and gloriously angry prose, a really memorable account of childhood poverty with a strong, resourceful female central character.

ived loved her books, that sounds like one I should try

Rwanda: Baking cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin