Reading the World: bibliograpy

Mexico
Signs preceding the end of the world Yuri Herrera

Japan
The Nakano Thrift Shop Hiromi Kawakami

Ireland
The Spinning Heart Donal Ryan

Yemen
Hurma Ali Al-Muqri

Sweden
A Man Called Ove Fredrik Backman

USA
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee

Iran
Persepolis Marjane Satrapi

Colombia
Of Love and Other Demons Gabriel García Márquez

Nigeria
Stay With Me Ayòbámi Adébáyò

Italy
The Beautiful Summer Cesare Pavese

Spain
Such Small Hands Andrés Barba

Signs preceding the end of the world

Country: Mexico
Author: Yuri Herrera
Translator: Lisa Dillman
Book: Signs preceding the end of the world

When I picked up Yuri Herrera's Signs preceding the end of the world, I probably should have paid more attention to the title. This is a 2009 book about a young Mexican woman, Makina, who illegally crosses from her home country into the US. Topical even when I read it at the end of October, given Donald Trump's promise to build a wall along the US-Mexico border and deport all illegal immigrants. Now, the title seems grimly, ironically prescient.

I actually chose this novel by chance. Well, not quite chance. I was browsing the fiction section for a short book. No more than about a centimetre thick, however many pages that works out as. I wanted one of those novellas where all the words matter and there's something brilliant about its brevity. This certainly fits that bill; its story, too, is fascinating, giving an insight into the human cost involved in such a journey – required reading, I might suggest, for the incoming president.

Signs preceding the end of the world is a realistic tale but with a mythological quality. It opens with a sinkhole swallowing up a man, car and dog. 'I'm dead,' are Makina's first words, who is only just spared a similar fate. As she embarks on a quest to find her brother in America, there's a feeling that this could in fact all be an allegory about passing from life to death. It's certainly about leaving behind a past life for a new one. Interesting, too, that these migrants have to pass across water, so symbolic of rebirth. The physical crossing of the river is fraught, and Makina doesn't make it without falling in: 'the world turned cold and green and filled with invisible water monsters.' But she reaches the USA, where she experiences snow for the first time, strange fried food, and is called scum'by 'a huge redheaded anglo who stank of tobacco'.

One of the most striking things about this novel was Herrera's non-standard vocabulary, which features a rich amalgam of anglo-Mexican and newly coined words. Lisa Dillman explores the challenge of translating this unusual lexicon, particularly how to capture the essence of the neologism 'jarchar', a word that comes from Mozarabic poetry, used all over the place here and meaning 'to leave'. She chooses the word 'verse', to suggest its poetic roots and the idea of motion – traverse, reverse, converse. And of course, it points to the wider universe, encompassing the sense that this one story of one woman in a specific time and place in fact tells us important things about identity, culture and today's world.

So that's the first country and first book from my Reading the World project. Mexico, tick! Next up, Japan.

United Palace, New York, 2016

Head to 175th Street and your eye may well be caught by the United Palace – yes, the building on the corner with the signs. What is it, I hear you ask? Good question, and one I asked too. The ornate, eclectic facade and curious shape gives little clue to identity; I read later that its architecture has been described as 'Byzantine-Romanesque-Indo-Hindu-Sino-Moorish-Persian-Eclectic-Rococo-Deco'. Seems fair.

Luckily it was Open House Day in New York, so the friend who lived locally and I could head in to take a look around. It was intriguing. A foyer lavish enough to rival an actual royal palace, a staircase grand enough for a Sunset Boulevard-style entrance. And a row of sayings plastered across one wall: 'Life takes from the taker and gives to the giver'; 'There is nothing so bad as a good excuse. The better the excuse, the worse it is.'; 'When you discover who you are, it doesn't matter what you've been.' I felt like I had stepped into a self-help book.

Turns out these, er, gems are the handiwork of Reverend Ike, a TV evangelist who bought the United Palace in 1969. Here's another of his nuggets of wisdom: 'The best thing you can do for the poor is not to be one of them.' It's capitalism-meets-religion, a sentiment that somehow seems to epitomise that very American 'fend for yourself' attitude, the idea that by wanting money enough, you will make the dollars flow in to your bank account. But his congregation flourished and his broadcasts reached 2.5 million people.

Perhaps it was inevitable that a TV evangelist would make his religious home in a former movie palace. The United Palace was originally an extravagant 3,000-seater theatre, which, for the best part of four decades from 1930, attracted audiences for films and vaudeville. Now, Reverend Ike's son owns the United Palace, and it's used as a church, live music venue and cultural centre. Bob Dylan has played there, so have the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle. Fantabulous, as Reverend Ike once said.

 

Reading the World

The challenge? Read one book from every country in the world. Accepted. Inspired by writer Ann Morgan's blog, A Year of Reading the World, I've decided to embark on a literary tour of the globe. I'm not aiming to finish it in a year, but I am going to try to read a book from each of the 196 countries that she covers – here's an entry on how she came up with the list. I might add places (ie some of the territories not on the initial line-up); I'll see how I go. I have, however, decided that books I've already read don't count towards the final tally, although I might include them in my bibliography. Any suggestions of the best fiction to read from other countries, available in English translation, gratefully received.