What is the best-known book set in Estonia?

See note on methodology

Finishing off the former Soviet republics, there’s a runaway winner here, most owned and most often tagged Estonia on both LibraryThing and Goodreads. Its author is Estonian by origin, but writes in Finnish; the novel of 2008 is based on a play first performed in 2007 about sexual violence in the Soviet occupation of Estonia, and the present day. It is:

Purge / Puhdistus, by Sofi Oksanen

She also takes second place on Goodreads with a 2003 novel about eating disorders and teh historical relationships between Finland, Estonia and Russia:

Stalinin lehmät / Stalin’s Cows, by Sofi Oksanen

Third on GR is a 1981 collection of autobiographical short stories by a Russian journalist who worked in Soviet Estonia during the early 1970s (apparently very funny): 

The Compromise / Компромисс, by Sergei Dovlatov

Second and third place on LT go to representatives of a particular non-fiction tradition that is well-represented there, the first published in 2000, the second in 2008:

Knitted Lace of Estonia: Techniques, Patterns, and Traditions, by Nancy Bush
Folk Knitting in Estonia : A Garland of Symbolism, Tradition, and Technique, by Nancy Bush

Other Estonian writers to note: Oskar Luts, A.H. Tammsaare, August Kitzberg, Jaan Kross, Margus Karu.

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What is the best known book set in Kosovo?

See note on methodology

This took a certain amount of digging, and I’m not completely certain that it qualifies on my geographical criteria – several reviewers think it is set in Bosnia, though the author seems clear that it is in Kosovo. It is the first in a series of six thrillers by the son of one of Ronald Reagan’s Secretaries of State, himself now a military policy wonk. Published in 2001, it is:

Secret Sanction, by Brian F. Haig

In second place on Goodreads, fourth on LT, is a 2009 book about a girl whose family are expelled from Kosovo during the 1998-99 conflict and her difficulties in adapting to American society, by a very well-known author. I suspect it fails my geographical criterion, but for the record it is:

The Day of the Pelican, by Katherine Paterson

In third place on both systems is a 2006 book with almost exactly the same theme but for much younger readers. Again, I suspect it fails my geographical criterion, but it is:

Drita, My Homegirl, by Jenny Lombard

In second place on LT, but fifth on GR, is the most authoritative non-fiction work on Kosovo that you are likely to find, a 1998 history of the country:

Kosovo: A Short History, by Noel Malcolm

And fourth on GR, fifth on LT, is another non-fiction book, a 2003 memoir about teaching English in Pristina shortly after the end of the conflict:

The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo, by Paula Huntley

Bubbling under: Tim Judah.

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Did you ever discover or hear tell of the atomic theory?

   “Did you ever discover or hear tell of the atomic theory?” the sergeant inquired.
   “No,” I answered.
   He leaned his mouth confidentially over to my ear. “Would it surprise you to be told,” he said darkly, “that the atomic theory is at work in this parish?”
   “It would indeed.”
   “It is doing untold destruction,” he continued, “the half of the people are suffering from it; it is worse than the smallpox.”
   He walked on, looking worried and preoccupied, as if what he was examining in his head was unpleasant in a very intricate way.
   “The atomic theory,” I sallied, “is a thing that is not clear to me at all.”
   “Michael Gilhaney,” said the sergeant, “is an example of a man that is nearly banjaxed from the principle of the atomic theory. Would it astonish you to hear that he is nearly half a bicycle?”
   “It would surprise me unconditionally,” I said.
   “Michael Gilhaney,” said the sergeant, “is nearly sixty years of age by plain computation and if he is itself, he has spent no less than thirty-five years riding his bicycle over the rocky roadsteads and up and down the hills and into the deep ditches when the road goes astray in the strain of the winter. He is always going to a particular destination or other on his bicycle at every hour of the day or coming back from there at every other hour. If it wasn’t that his bicycle was stolen every Monday he would be sure to be more than halfway now.”
   “Halfway to where?”
   “Halfway to being a bicycle himself,” said the sergeant.
   “Your talk,” I said, “is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.”
   “Did you never study atomics when you were a lad?” asked the sergeant, giving me a look of great inquiry and surprise.
   “No,” I answered.
   “That is a very serious defalcation,” he said, “but all the same I will tell you the size of it. Everything is composed of small particles of itself, and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. These diminutive gentlemen are called atoms. Do you follow me intelligently?”
   “Yes.”
   “They are lively as twenty leprechauns doing a jig on top of a tombstone.”
   “Now take a sheep,” the sergeant said. “What is a sheep, only millions of little bits of sheepness whirling around and doing intricate convolutions inside the sheep? What else is it but that?”
   “That would be bound to make the beast dizzy,” I observed, “especially if the whirling was going on inside the head as well.”
   The sergeant gave me a look which I am sure he himself would describe as one of non-possum and noli-me-tangere.
   “That remark is what may well be called buncombe,” he said sharply, “because the nerve strings and the sheep’s head itself are whirling into the same bargain, and you can cancel out one whirl against the other, and there you are—like simplifying a division sum when you have fives above and below the bar.”
   “To say the truth, I did not think of that,” I said.
   “Atomics is a very intricate theorem and can be worked out with algebra, but you would want to take it by degrees, because you might spend the whole night proving a bit of it with rulers and cosines and similar other instruments and then at the windup not believe what you had proved at all. If that happened, you would have to go back over it till you got a place where you could believe your own facts and figures and then go on again from that particular place till you had the whole thing properly believed and not have bits of it half-believed or a doubt in your head hurting you like when you lose the stud of your shirt in bed.”
   “Very true,” I said.
   “Consecutively and consequentially,” he continued, “you can safely infer that you are made of atoms yourself and so is your fob pocket and the tail of your shirt and the instrument you use for taking the leavings out of the crook of your hollow tooth. Do you happen to know what takes place when you strike a bar of iron with a good coal hammer or with a blunt instrument?”
   “What?”
   “When the wallop falls, the atoms are bashed away down to the bottom of the bar and compressed and crowded there like eggs under a good clucker. After a while in the course of time they swim around and get back at last to where they were. But if you keep hitting the bar long enough and hard enough they do not get a chance to do this, and what happens then?”
   “That is a hard question.”
   “Ask a blacksmith for the true answer and he will tell you that the bar will dissipate itself away by degrees if you persevere with the hard wallops. Some of the atoms of the bar will go into the hammer, and the other half into the table or the stone or the particular article that is underneath the bottom of the bar.”
   “That is well-known,” I agreed.
   “The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them, and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles.”
   I let go a gasp of astonishment that made a sound in the air like a bad puncture.
   “And you would be flabbergasted at the number of bicycles that are half human, almost half man, half partaking of humanity.”
   “Are you certain about the humanity of the bicycle?” I inquired of him. “Is the atomic theory as dangerous as you say?”
   “It is between twice and three times as dangerous as it might be,” he replied gloomily. “Early in the morning I often think it is four times, and what is more, if you lived here for a few days and gave full play to your observation and inspection, you would know how certain the sureness of certainty is.”
   “Gilhaney did not look like a bicycle,” I said. “He had no back wheel on him, and I did not think he had a front wheel either, although I did not give much attention to his front.”
   The sergeant looked at me with some commiseration. “You cannot expect him to grow handlebars out of his neck, but I have seen him do more indescribable things than that. Did you ever notice the queer behavior of bicycles in these parts?”
   “I am not long in this district.”
   “Then watch the bicycles if you think it is pleasant to be surprised continuously,” he said. “When a man lets things go so far that he is half or more than half a bicycle, you will not see so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at curbstones. Of course there are other things connected with ladies and ladies’ bicycles that I will mention to you separately some time. But the man-charged bicycle is a phenomenon of great charm and intensity and a very dangerous article.”
   At this point a man with long coattails spread behind him approached quickly on a bicycle, coasting benignly down the road past us from the hill ahead. I watched him with the eye of six eagles, trying to find out which was carrying the other and whether it was really a man with a bicycle on his shoulders. I did not seem to see anything, however, that was memorable or remarkable.
The sergeant was looking into his black notebook.
   “That was O’Feersa,” he said at last. “His figure is only twenty-three percent.”
   “He is twenty-three percent bicycle?”
   “Yes.”
   “Does that mean that his bicycle is also twenty-three percent O’Feersa?”
   “It does.”
   “How much is Gilhaney?”
   “Forty-eight.”
   “Then O’Feersa is much lower.”
   “That is due to the lucky fact that there are three similar brothers in the house and that they are too poor to have a separate bicycle apiece. Some people never know how fortunate they are when they are poorer than each other. Six years ago one of the three O’Feersas won a prize of ten pounds in John Bull. When I got the wind of this tiding, I knew I would have to take steps unless there was to be two new bicycles in the family. Luckily I knew the postman very well. The postman! Great holy suffering indiarubber bowls of brown stirabout!” The recollection of the postman seemed to give the sergeant a pretext for unlimited amusement and cause for intricate gesturing with his red hands.
   “The postman?” I said.
   “Seventy-one percent,” he said quietly.
   “Great Scot!”
   “A round of thirty-eight miles on the bicycle every single day for forty years, hail, rain or snowballs. There is very little hope of ever getting his number down below fifty again.”
   “You bribed him?”
   “Certainly. With two of the little straps you put around the hubs of bicycles to keep them spick.”
   “And what way do these people’s bicycles behave?”
   “These people’s bicycles?”
   “I mean these bicycles’ people or whatever is the proper name for them—the ones that have two wheels under them and a handlebars.”
   “The behavior of a bicycle that has a high content of humanity,” he said, “is very cunning and entirely remarkable. You never see them moving by themselves, but you meet them in the least accountable places unexpectedly. Did you never see a bicycle leaning against the dresser of a warm kitchen when it is pouring outside?”
   “I did.”
   “Not very far away from the fire?”
   “Yes.”
   “Near enough to the family to hear the conversation?”
   “Yes.”
   “Not a thousand miles from where they keep the eatables?”
   “I did not notice that. You do not mean to say that these bicycles eat food?”
   “They were never seen doing it—nobody ever caught them with a mouthful of steak. All I know is that the food disappears.”
   “What!”
   “It is not the first time I have noticed crumbs at the front wheels of some of these gentlemen.”
   “All this is a great blow to me,” I said. “How would you know a man has a lot of bicycle in his veins?”
   “If his number is over fifty, you can tell it unmistakable from his walk. He will walk smartly always and never sit down, and he will lean against the wall with his elbow out and stay like that all night in his kitchen instead of going to bed. If he walks too slowly or stops in the middle of the road, he will fall down in a heap and will have to be lifted and set in motion again by some extraneous party. This is the unfortunate state that the postman has cycled himself into, and I do not think he will ever cycle himself out of it.”

   “I do not think I will ever ride a bicycle,” I said.

From The Third Policeman, by Flann O’Brien
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What is the best-known book set in Latvia?

See note on methodology

Some of you who are fans of Scandinavian crime stories were miffed that Jo Nesbø failed to place in my Norway entry. You should have been satisfied with Stieg Larsson’s triumph in Sweden. Swedish crime has a long arm, and the best-known book set in Latvia, by a very long margin, is the second in one of the classic Scandinavian police procedural series, in which our hero is sent across the Baltic to solve crime and generally have a lousy time. Published in 1992, it is:

The Dogs of Riga / Hundarna i Riga (second in the Wallander series) by Henning Mankell

The top book entirely set in Latvia on GoodReads is by a Latvian writer, and tells of being a teenager in Jelgava, which is about 50 km from Riga, in the 1990s, concerts, coffee shop conversations, and betrayals. It does not appear to have been translated into English. Published in 2013, and winner of the European Union Prize for Literature, it is:

Jelgava 94, by Jānis Joņevs

Whereas Goodreads often has good outreach into particular literary traditions (including notably Arabic, though that hasn’t figured in these posts), LibraryThing has strong representation from other traditions, and the top book by a Latvian writer on LibraryThing in a 1997 manual relating to one of those:

Latvian Mittens: Traditional Designs & Techniques, by Lizbeth Upitis

A couple of other books that feature in the mix here: a Latvian-born Canadian historian’s 1989 history of culture and violence at the start of the 20th century:

Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, by Modris Eksteins

And a controversial 2007 account by an Australian writer of what happened to his father in the first world war, controversial because it is presented as non-fiction but some have challenged the authenticity of the narrative (and judging from the title alone, it sounds pretty improbable):

The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father’s Nazi Boyhood, by Mark Kurzem

Bubbling under: Inga Ābele, Andrejs Pumpurs, Aleksandrs Grīns, Agate Nesaule.

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What is the best-known book set in Slovenia?

See note on methodology

There is a clear runaway winner here, one of the clearest winners I have had in this series of posts; and I fear that my Slovenian friends are not going to be very happy about it. A 1988 novel by a Brazilian writer, mainly set in a mental hosiptal near Ljubljana, it was made into a 2009 film starring Sarah Michelle “Buffy” Gellar (though apparently the film moves the setting to New York, rather than Slovenia, so as not to confuse the audience). I hated the only book I have read by this author, and I see nothing about his Slovenian-set novel that makes me think I want to read it. It is:

Veronika Decides to Die / Veronika Decide Morrer, by Paulo Coelho

Obviously the best-known Slovenian writer is Slavoj Žižek, though he generally writes in English these days, and it’s difficult to see how one can argue that any of his his best-known works – The Sublime Object of Ideology, Violence, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce and Welcome to the Desert of the Real – is set in Slovenia. 

The top book actually set in Slovenia, by a Slovenian writer, on GoodReads, by a decent margin, is a 2008 novel about young people in Ljubljana whose families fled Bosnia during the war, and the working out of the tensions of the legacy of conflict. It got some unwelcome publicity when the Slovenian police tried to ban it shortly after publication (this collapsed in a welter of publicity which ended the career of the senior policeman concerned). It is:

Southern Scum Go Home / Čefurji raus!, by Goran Vojnović

The top book set in Slovenia by a Slovenian writer on GoodReads (by a very slim margin) is an entirely different affair, a 1984 novel set in Maribor on the eve of the second world war, where a businessman (Maybe Austrian? Maybe not?) stops and makes an assessment of his life and the world. It is:

Northern Lights / Severni sij, by Drago Jančar

But I’m afraid today’s prize goes to the Brazilian.

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Links I found interesting for 15-03-2015

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Has Neil Gaiman outsold Heinlein and Herbert?

Over on Twitter, Neil Gaiman says:

The page he links to puts him at #17 for all time, with 40+ million sales; Heinlein at #26, with 30+ million; and Herbert at #30 with a rather precise 26 million.

I have checked the figures with my favourite stats sites, Goodreads and LibaryThing, which of course provide information only about their users. But the evidence from them is that, if anything, the article underestimates Neil Gaiman's lead over the other two.

On Goodreads, users have logged 694,192 individual books by Frank Herbert, 702,287 by Robert A. Heinlein and 2,847,588 by Neil Gaiman.

Dune, with 388,489 ratings, is more popular than any individual Gaiman book. But the next in sequence, Dune Messiah, has a mere 65,006 ratings, putting it behind all 7 of Gaiman's novels and the first volume of Sandman.

Stranger in a Strange Land, with 180,117 ratings, is behind American Gods (329,853), Coraline (238,266), The Graveyard Book (223,809), Neverwhere (201,508), Stardust (194,633) and The Ocean at the End of the Lane (195,817).

Starship Troopers (100,823) is also behind Anansi Boys (117,069) and only just ahead of The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes (99,446).

It's a similar story on LibraryThing, where users have logged 75,177 books by Frank Herbert, 112,044 by Robert A. Heinlein and 242,073 by Neil Gaiman.

Here, American Gods (24,118) is ahead of Dune (23,110).

Good Omens (21,345), Neverwhere (18,145), Stardust (14,980), Anansi Boys (14,594), The Graveyard Book (12,813) and Coraline (12,578) are ahead of Dune Messiah (9,747) and Children of Dune (8,645).

All of the above, plus The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes (8,003), are ahead of Starship Troopers (7,975) and Stranger in a Strange Land (7,557).

One could object that Gaiman's career started forty years after Herbert's, and fifty after Heinlein's, and that therefore the online catalogues are missing all the books that were sold in the decades before the internet made it possible to track these things. I think Gaiman will still come out on top, even allowing for that: in the course of his career is that sf and, particularly, fantasy have acquired a mass appeal that was unthinkable at the peak of Herbert and Heinlein's times. Obviously, all of Gaiman's books have been sold in the last thirty years, since he didn't start publishing until the late 1980s; I wouldn't be surprised if three quarters of Heinlein's and Herbert's total sales have happened in that period as well.

So, the answer to the question is, yes – Neil Gaiman probably has sold more books than Robert A. Heinlein or Frank Herbert; and quite possibly he has sold more than both combined.

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What is the best-known book set in Macedonia?

See note on methodology

Where the literature associated with some countries is defined by a single historical event, the literary associations of Macedonia are dominated by a single historical figure – which is a problem, because although his realm very clearly included most if not all of the territory of today’s Republic of Macedonia, most of his life was spent far away – indeed, very far away – so none of the many books about him is going to contain much of relevance for my purposes. For the record, anyway, the top three books about him on both LT and GR are the 1972 middle book of a famous trilogy, followed by the 1969 first book of that trilogy (it’s unusual, I think, for a middle book to be the best known), followed by a 1974 biography. They are:

The Persian Boy, by Mary Renault
Fire from Heaven, by Mary Renault
Alexander the Great, by Robin Lane Fox

The top book actually set in Macedonia is not so much a “kiss and tell” story as a 2005 “spy and tell” story by a former CIA agent, who was posted there as her only real clandestine field assignment from 1998 to 2001. I must have been in the same room as her on a number of occasions, though I must say I barely recognise the Macedonia she portrays. Less than half the book is set in Macedonia (the first two-thirds are about her spy school training), so I’m noting it here for the record rather than awarding it today’s prize. It is:

Blowing my Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy, by Lindsay Moran

The top book in Macedonian on Goodreads is a 1952 children’s book by a well-known Macedonian writer. It’s not clear to me if it actually is set in Macedonia, but I’ve been inclined to be generous in similar cases in the past. It does not appear to have been translated into English. It is:

Шеќерна приказна [Sugar Story], by Slavko Janevski

It is, however, invisible on LibraryThing, which seems generally less good on Macedonian literature than GR. so I’m giving today’s prize to a 2007 graphic novel by two Americans about the international peace-building effort in Macedonia after the 2001 conflict. It’s generally well-observed – indeed, several friends of mine appear in it, though drawn to look very different from their real appearances – and it’s the best I could find on LT, and only just behind the children’s book on GR. It is the approriately named:

Macedonia, by Harvey Pekar and Heather Roberson, illustrated by Ed Piskor

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Links I found interesting for 14-03-2015

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What is the best-known book set in Albania?

See note on methodology

Albanian literature is dominated by a single writer, born in 1936 and still living. Seven of the eight books most frequently tagged “Albania” on Goodreads are by him, and nine of the top ten on LibraryThing. I’ve read half a dozen of his works, and enjoyed them all very much. The two top books on both LT and GR are:

Broken April / Prilli i Thyer, by Ismail Kadare (top on GR, second on LT)
The Palace of Dreams / Pallati i Enderrave, by Ismail Kadare (top on LT, second on GR

However, I’m sorry to say that neither of them is today’s winner. Despite their excellence as literature, both have been well outsold by a mildly funny Cold War thriller, published and set in 1966, about a grandmother who is recruited by the CIA to go undercover in Mexico and ends up imprisoned in Albania. It is the first of a series of 14 novels (I wonder how they would hold up to the passage of time) and has been filmed twice, once starring Rosalind Russell (in her last role) and one with (of course) Angela Lansbury. It is:

The Unexpected Mrs Pollifax, by Dorothy Gilman

Apart from that, though, it’s I.K. all the way.

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Links I found interesting for 13-03-2015

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We’ve known this was coming

Though of course it doesn't make it any easier.

Many of you reading this knew him better, and for longer, than I did. Some of you owe a lot more than I do to his writing. I'm merely one fan among many. These are my thoughts.

He was the first writer who ever impressed me in person. He wasn't the first famous writer to come and talk at CUSFS while I was at Cambridge; but he was the first to have us rolling in the aisles as he read from his not-yet-published book, Pyramids. The last time I saw him was at the last DWcon that he was really fit for, in 2010, when he thoroughly charmed my mother-in-law at a kaffeeklatsch. Other than that, we had exchanged a few words at the 2005 Worldcon. So I can't claim to have known him.

But his words were with me often at bad times, cheering me up. I remember a tense fact-finding mission to Macedonia in the middle of the 2001 conflict, when I shared The Fifth Elephant round the various Balkan experts on our mission. I remember simply being cheered by his humour, and moved by his sæva indignatio, at times when I needed it. Sure, there were some misses along with the hits. But the hits will stay with us for a long time to come, and I am grateful for them. Just one favourite quote, among many, this one from A Hat Full of Sky:

“AAaargwannawannaaaagongongonaargggaaaaBLOON!” which is the traditional sound of a very small child learning that with balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know when not to let go of the string. The whole point of balloons is to teach small children this.

It’s that “as with life itself” that really nails it.

As he said about Doctor Who, "The hero can fail, or die, and we don't all have a magical hand‑wavey way to regenerate ourselves. It's an important lesson." He won’t regenerate, but he lives on.

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Thursday Reading

Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (a chapter a day)
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Grave Matter, by Justin Richards
The Charm of Belgium, by Brian Lunn
σ2

Last books finished
Lethbridge-Stewart: The Forgotten Son, by Andy Frankham-Allen
The Jonah Kit, by Ian Watson
λ4

Last week’s audios

Next books
The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon
With The Light Vol 8, by Keiko Tobe
Last Resort, by Paul Leonard

Books acquired in last week
An Age of Licence, by Lucy Knisley
De Maagd en de Neger, by Judith Vanistendael

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What is the best-known book set in Lithuania?

See note on methodology

There is a very clear winner here, but I’m not entirely sure that it satisfied my geographical criteria. It is the book most frequently tagged “Lithuania” on both LibraryThing and Goodreads, and is by a considerable margin the most widely owned of such books. But as far as I can tell, most of the story actually happens on Russian territory; it is the story of a teenager deported to Siberia with her family after the Russian conquest of Lithuania in 1941. Published only in 2011 – but clearly already a best-seller – it is:

Between Shades of Gray, by Ruta Sepetys

The top books actually and clearly set in Lithuania by ownership on LibraryThing and Goodreads are both twnetieh-century classics, but score completely differently on the two systems. High on LT, low on GR, is a Nobel Laureat’s story of growing up in a rural environment in which he and his family spoke Polish but almost everyone around them spoke Lithuanian. It’s generally agreed that the setting is Šeteniai in Lithuania. Published in 1955. the book is:

The Issa Valley / Dolina Issy, by Czesław Miłosz

On Goodreads, by quite a long way, the top book set in Lithuania is a classic of Lithuanian literature, first published in 1933. It is the story of a priest who struggles with the contradictions between faith and art, and the ultimate victory of the latter. I’m surprised by how well it does on GR – perhaps it is a set text somewhere (it is amolst certainly a set text in Lithuanian schools). It is:

In the Shadow of the Altars / Altorių šešėly, by Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas

Any more suggestions? We did well with the Georgia discussion.

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Links I found interesting for 11-03-2015

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What is the best-known book set in Armenia?

See note on methodology

Most of the books which are tagged “Armenia” on both LibraryThing and Goodreads deal with one obvious and awful historical event, whose 100th anniversary will be grimly commemorated next month. But (for reasons which are not surprising) very few of them are actually set in the boundaries of today’s Republic of Armenia, because that was precisely the territory held by the Russian Empire rather than the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

The top book tagged “Armenia” on Goodreads and LibraryThing is also the most widely owned by a long way on Goodreads, and a close second on LibraryThing. Published as recently as 2012, it is mainly set in what is now Syria, alternating between 1915 and the near-present day. It is:

The Sandcastle Girls, by Chrus Bohjalian

The top book by ownership on LibraryThing is set in what’s now Turkey, largely in Istanbul with an American subplot, and is also fairly recent (2008). It follows an intertwined Armenian/Turkish family history over the generations since 1915. It is:

Baba ve Piç / The Bastard of Istanbul, by Elif Şafak

An Armenian fairy tale also scores very well, having had a very popular and well-illustrated American publication in 1971. It’s the story of a fox whose tail gets cut off. While it’s not absolutely clear that the action takes place in Armenia, it’s worth noting here:

One Fine Day, by Nonny Hogrogian

The top book on both LT and GR that is clearly set on the territory of today’s Republic of Armenia is a 1960s account of a Russian writer who move there to edit a translation of an Armenian novel into Russian. It’s not a hugely satisfactory answer, given the particular circumstances of this case, but it is the best I am going to get, I suspect. It is:

Добро вам! / Armenian Sketchbook, by Vasily Grossman

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What is the best-known book set in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

See note on methodology

This rather surprised me. A best-selling novel of 2008, which traces the history of a specific historic artifact, which originated in Barcelona but has been in Bosnia for more than 500 years; it’s by far the most owned book set in Bosnia on either LT or GR, and is the most tagged “Bosnia” on LT (and second on GR). I hadn’t actually heard of it, which maybe shows the extent to which I took my eye off the Balkan ball after 2007. It is:

People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks

The second-ranked book, also published in 2008, deals exclusively with the recent war and its impact on Sarajevo. Although it is a novel, it clearly references one particular person; its subject foudn out only after publication that he had become the main character in a best-seller, and was not at all happy about it. The book is:

The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway

In third and fourth place are two books by actual Bosnians. The most tagged “Bosnia” on Goodreads is also third-ranked by ownership there, and fourth-ranked by ownership on LibraryThing. It is the story of a Bosnian town through the centuries, written by Bosnia’s only winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. I actually prefer his book set in Travnik during the Napoleonic wars (which has been translated into English with various titles), but I can accept that his best-known book is:

The Bridge on the Drina / На Дрини ћуприја, by Ivo Andrić

Third-ranked by ownership on LibraryThing, and fourth-ranked by ownership on Goodreads, is a book whose author I actually know personally; we were briefly professional colleagues for a few months in 2002. Inspired by Anne Frank, she kept a diary of her experiences during the outbreak of war in the 1990s; unlike Anne Frank, of course, she lived and is now a film producer in Ireland. Her book is:

Zlata’s Diary / Zlatin dnevnik, by Zlata Filipović

Bubbling under: Joe Sacco, Alksandar Hemon, Meša Selimović and the usual suspects.

NB that I didn’t find anything much set in Herzegovina. I fear that the best-known book (and that’s not saying much) set in the old duchy is a purportedly non-fiction account of engaging with mystical visions. It is:

Medjugorje: The Message, by Wayne Weible

Mostar, alas, doesn’t seem to have inspired the same literary frenzy as Sarajevo, though it also had a truly wretched war experience.

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What is the best-known book set in Moldova?

See note on methodology

I love Moldova. I’ve been there ten times since 2001, I sing its praises to everyone I meet who shows the slightest interest, I have many friends in Chișinău, and I have even visited Comrat, the capital of the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauz Yeri. Moldovan wine is fantastic, and Moldovan food is decent, though the landscape is not terribly exciting (but not everyone can be Switzerland, after all).

I have to admit that this is a minority enthusiasm, which has visibly not been shared by the owners of books logged on LibraryThing and Goodreads. The top book with a Moldovan setting, by quite a long way, is by a British comedian who rashly wagered with a friend that he would be able to defeat the entire Moldovan national football team, one by one, at a sport of his own choice. I’m a bit uneasy about some of the attitudes displayed, and it also must be admitted that significant (though short) chunks of the narrative take place in London, Northern Ireland and Israel, but it is clearly by far the best-known book in English about the country. Published in 2001, it is:

Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, by Tony Hawks

The best-known book set within the internationally recognised boundaries of Moldova, and by someone from there, is a largely autobiographical memoir of growing up in a family of Siberian mafia emigrants to Transnistria, during and after the conflict of the 1990s. It’s been a big hit in Italy, where the author now lives, and has been filmed with John Malkovich in the lead role of the narrator’s grandfather. It is:

Siberian Education: Growing Up in a Criminal Underworld, by Nicolai Lilin

The top book by an author from the territory controlled by the Moldovan government is a story of various attempts to emigrate to Italy; it has been well reviewed, though published only last year in English. It is:

Все там будем / The Good Life Elsewhere, by Vladimir Lorchenkov

I’m really surprised and slightly sad not to find more.

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What is the best-known book set in Croatia?

See note on methodology

Sorry, Croatian friends, but there is a very clear winner and I’m not sure that you are going to like it. Although the book starts in Syria, and ends in Trieste, most of it is set in a snowdrift outside Vinkovci in which various personal dramas, some based on the then-recent Lindbergh kidnapping, are played out without much reference to the surrounding topography. This book has been invoked explicitly in two different Doctor Who stories. Published in 1934 by the best-known British crime writer of the twentieth century, and famously adapted for the screen in 1974, it is:

Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie

The book most tagged “Croatia” on LibraryThing, which also does well by ownership on GoodReads, is about an Englishwoman moving to the country and finding herself emotionally engaging with the aftermath of the recent war, by a Scottish writer whose roots are actually in Sierra Leone. Published to wide acclaim in 2013, it is:

The Hired Man, by Aminatta Forna

The most frequently tagged “Croatia” on Goodreads is unfortunately set outside Croatia – it is precisely a story of exile and dislocation, mainly set in Berlin. It is:

Muzej bezuvjetne predaje / The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, by Dubravka Ugrešić

Bubbling under: Slavenka Drakulić, various travleogues

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What is the best-known book set in Georgia? – revisited

My previous post stimulated useful discussion on both Twitter and Facebook, with three more books flagged up to me as potential candidates. On the numbers alone, one of the three, a classic Russian novel from 1839/1841 about a young officer posted to the Caucasus, is way ahead of any other book I had previously considered. It looks like a brilliant book, and I look forward to reading it properly; but unfortunately as far as I can tell all five parts are set on the northern side of the Caucasus. On the basis of a quick skim, the first part, "Bela" appears to be set in and around "a fort beyond the Terek", ie what we now call Ingushetia or quite possibly Chechnya; "Maksim Maksimich" appears to be set in Vladikavkaz, "Taman" is quite clearly set in Taman and "Princess Mary" appears to be set in Pyatigorsk, all in the Russian Federation now; and "The Fatalist" is set in an unnamed Cossack village, probably also in Russia. There are lots of references to Georgia, and occasional scenes set there, but (with regret) I think it doesn't count. It is:

A Hero of Our Time / Герой нашего времени, by Mikhail Lermontov

Scoring nearly as well on LibraryThing, though doing a bit worse on GR, is a famous play which I really should have thought of myself. It was written in German in 1944, but first performed in English translation in 1948. Almost all the characters have obviously Georgian names; what's more, we are told that they live in a country called "Grusinia" which is pretty obviously a variant name for Georgia. There is a minor problem in that the framing narrative of the play is set in a Caucasian village devastated by the Nazis, who never actually reached Georgia; but that framing narrative is not extensive (and is often dispensed with in performance). There is a major problem in that most of the action takes place in the city of Nukha, which was indeed part of various Georgian states during the medieval period, but is now called Şəki or Shaki and is firmly in the territory of today's Azerbaijan. So with even more regret, I fear I must disqualify:

The Caucasian Chalk Circle / Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis, by Bertolt Brecht

That does leave me with a clear winner out of the three, one of a series of urban fantasy novels set in a post-apocalyptic future where magic has returned to the world, and not in a good way. The series as a whole is (I am told) set in the wrong Georgia, specifically in Atlanta. But in the sixth volume, our heroine and her allies venture east to Gagra, which is a real place in Abkhazia, and spend most of the book there. I'm aware of the views of local residents, but the fact is that Abkhazia is still regarded as part of Georgia by most international actors. So, with apologies to David Turashvili and Wendell Steavenson (and indeed to all local residents both sides of the Inguri river), as far as I can tell the best-known book set in Georgia or Abkhazia is:

Magic Rises, book 6 in the Kate Daniels series by "Ilona Andrews" [Ilona and Andrew Gordon]

Thanks to those who contributed to the discussions.

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Links I found interesting for 06-03-2015

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Thursday reading

Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (a chapter a day)
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Lethbridge-Stewart: The Forgotten Son, by Andy Frankham-Allen
The Jonah Kit, by Ian Watson
λ4

Last books finished
Saga vol 3, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Last week’s audios
Welcome To Night Vale, ep 61
The Darkness of Glass, by Justin Richards

Next books
The Charm of Belgium, by Brian Lunn
The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon
Grave Matter, by Justin Richards

Books acquired in last week
Exploding School to Pieces, by Mick Deal
Guy Erma and the Son of Empire, by Sally Anne Melia
Rose de Paris, by Gilles Schesser and Eric Puech

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