Here’s the full list. Note that in a couple of cases I have retrospectively added / changed the winner since my original post. Full analysis with links coming soon.

Russia: Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Germany: The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
Turkey: The Iliad, by Homer
France: Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
Italy: Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown
England: Nineteen Eighty-four, by George Orwell (not counting Harry Potter)
Spain: The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Ukraine: Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer
Poland: Night, by Elie Wiesel
Romania: Dracula, by Bram Stoker
Netherlands: The Diary of Anne Frank
Belgium: Villette, by Charlotte Brontë
Greece: The Odyssey, by Homer
Czech Republic: Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka
Portugal: Blindness, by José Saramago
Hungary: Embers, by Sandor Márai
Sweden: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larssen
Azerbaijan: Ali and Nino, by Kurban Said
Belarus: Defiance, by Nechama Tec / The Bielski Brothers, by Peter Duffy
Austria: Persepolis, tome 3, by Marjane Satrapi
Switzerland: Heidi, by Johanna Spyri
Bulgaria: Arms and the Man, by George Bernard Shaw
Serbia: The Tiger’s Wife, by Tea Olbreht
Denmark: Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
Finland: Finn Family Moomintroll, by Tove Jansson
Slovakia: Zoli, by Colum McCann
Scotland: Macbeth, by William Shakespeare (not counting Harry Potter)
Norway: Sophie’s World, by Jostein Gaarder
Ireland: Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt
Georgia: Magic Rises, by Ilona Andrews
Croatia: Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie
Moldova: Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, by Tony Hawks
Bosnia and Herzegovina: People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks
Wales: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs
Armenia: Armenian Sketchbook, by Vasily Grossman
Lithuania: The Issa Valley, by Czesław Miłosz / In the Shadow of the Altars, by Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas
Albania: The Unexpected Mrs Pollifax, by Dorothy Gilman
Macedonia, by Harvey Pekar and Heather Roberson, illustrated by Ed Pisko
Slovenia: Veronica Decides to Die, by Paolo Coelho 
Latvia: The Dogs of Riga, by Henning Mankell
Kosovo: Secret Sanction, by Brian F. Haig
Northern Ireland: The Case of the Missing Books, by Ian Sansom
Estonia: Purge, by Sofie Oksanen
Cyprus: Othello, by William Shakespeare
Montenegro: The Black Mountain, by Rex Stout
Luxembourg: The Expats, by Chris Pavone
Malta: The Jew of Malta, by Christopher Marlowe
Iceland: Jar City, by Arnaldur Indridason
Jersey: Night of the Fox, by Jack Higgins
Isle of Man: Safe House, by Chris Ewan
Andorra: If You Dare, by Kresley Cole
Guernsey: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Faroe Islands: Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?, by Johan Harstad
Liechtenstein: Ludmila, by Paul Gallico / Stamping Grounds, by Charlie Connelly
Monaco: I kill, by Giorgio Faletti
Gibraltar: Uneasy Relations, by Aaron Elkins
San Marino: Smoke Into Flame, by Jane Arbor
Åland Islands: Ice, by Ulla-Lena Lundberg
Svalbard and Jan Mayen: Dark Matter, by Michelle Paver / Bear Island, by Alistair McLean
Vatican City: Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, by Ross King
Sark: Mr Pye, by Mervyn Peake
Herm: Fairy Gold, by Compton Mackenzie

See note on methodology

I’m glad to say that we are finishing this set of posts on a highbrow note. I have disqualified Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, not on the grounds of literary quality, but because as far as I remember much less than half of the book is actually set in the Vatican, with other parts of Rome getting a good deal of coverage. 

Instead, the top book with a Vatican setting, on both Goodreads (by a wide margin) and LibraryThing (by a smaller margin) is a 2003 work of non-fiction, recounting the story of how one of Europe’s greatest artists spent four years creating probably the best known artwork in the Vatican. It sounds excellent and (when I eventually have some time) I will try and get hold of it myself. It is:

Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, by Ross King

There are an awful lot of thrillers with Vatican scenery (looking particularly at the works of Daniel Silva here), and I have spent more time than is really necessary looking for those where the majority of the action is actually set there rather than just visiting to have a look. The most convincing candidate (on that criterion only) is a novel regarding the revelations of Fatima, spilling over into a papal conclave (which let’s face is is the only newsworthy thing that ever happens in the Vatican these days). It is:

The Third Secret, by Steve Berry

Appropriate enough to finish up in the Vatican on Good Friday!

• Where are the women in Brussels’ policy panel debates?
  
  Good question.
  (tags: eu sexandgenderandsexuality )
• It’s the geopolitics, stupid: Why TTIP matters
  
  Unusually passionate from @CER_London.
  (tags: eu uspolitics )
• A Good Week for Democracy Globally
  
  @gerrylynch: “if elections didn’t change anything, people wouldn’t be shot for demanding them.”
  (tags: politics elections )
• Debate Predictions
  
  Probably all true. I’m Belgian so I don’t care. (Much.)
  (tags: ukpolitics )
• The Flawed Standard Model of Geopolitics
  
  Unpicking the definition of a state.
  (tags: politics )
• Geopolitical Anomalies in the “Greater Middle East,” Part I
  
  From Bosnia to Somaliland, via Nagorno-Karabakh.
  (tags: azerbaijan georgia russia cyprus kosovo moldova bosnia serbia iraq armenia turkey somaliland caucasus world: middle east world: ukraine )
• Obama’s Leadership and the New Framework Agreement with Iran
  
  A positive assessment.
  (tags: uspolitics iran )

This was the first book I had read by Canada’s only Nobel laureate in literature, but it won’t be the last. It’s a collection of short stories, each one of them beautiful in its own way. The title story and the one about the man who accidentally killed his own child are the ones that particularly linger with me; but they are brilliant and evocative slices of ordinary life, expressed in an understated but effective tone, usually showing rather than telling. Strongly recommended.

A collection of four decades of cartoons from the Irish Times‘ Martyn Turner, concentrating on Liam Cosgrave, Jack Lynch, Charles Haughey, Garret Fitzgerald, Albert Reynolds, John Bruton, Bertie Ahern, Brian Cowan and Enda Kenny as successive heads of government since Turner first picked up his pencil. Unfortunately the collection only includes cartoons not previously published, so some of his best ones are omitted (and some jokes recycled verbatim), and the fact that he concentrates on the Taoisigh means that other social and political issues are a bit sidelined, so it’s not a great starting point for Turner’s work – though I imagine that the likely target audience will already be familiar with him.

Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (a chapter a day)
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Wages of Sin, by Andrew M. Greeley
A Slip of the Keyboard, by Terry Pratchett
χ2

Last books finished
ζ1
Shan Mohangi: 95 Harcourt Street, by Kevin Higgins
Beyond the Sun, by Matthew Jones
ρ2

Last week’s audios
Welcome to Night Vale, eps 62-64

Next books
Kushiel’s Justice, by Jacqueline Carey
Scales of Gold, by Dorothy Dunnett
Burning Heart, by Dave Stone

Books acquired in last week
Space Helmet for a Cow, by Paul Kirkley
Companion Piece, ed.L.M. Myles and Liz Barr
Tove Jansson: Work and Love, by Tuula Karjalainen
A Visitor’s Companion to Tudor England, by Suzannah Lipscomb
The Quarry, by Iain Banka
A Delicate Truth, by John le Carré
Shan Mohangi: 95 Harcourt Street, by Kevin Higgins

• And you think those anti-immigration mugs were bad? Labour’s ‘appalling gutter politics’ on drugs
  
  Ugh.
  (tags: ukpolitics )
• Generous welfare benefits make people more likely to want to work, not less
  
  No surprise, surely?
  (tags: politics economics )
• My Lib Dem ambivalence
  
  By James Graham; well put.
  (tags: libdems ukpolitics )

A comprehensive analysis, with my old friend Dominic Bryan as one of the co-authors, looking at the dispute over flags which convulsed Northern Ireland, Belfast in particular, in the winter of 2012/2013, available for free from QUB. In a nutshell, after Belfast City Council voted on a policy of flying the Union Jack only on particular days rather than 365 days a year, Loyalist protestors created havoc by nightly demonstrations which often escalated to disorder, particularly targeting the Alliance Party which was seen as the main culprit for the council’s change of policy. The economic disruption was significant; the impact on Alliance representatives, including many who were not actually Belfast councillors but were none the less subjected to violent harassment and death threats, was serious in terms of personal security; the issue remains largely unresolved.

The report gives a sympathetic hearing to all sides, perhaps more sympathetic than I would have been in some cases. The most interesting finding of fact for me was how little the mainstream Unionist parties were involved in the organisation of the protests. The authors seem not completely convinced (though I personally am) that the DUP and UUP were behind the leaflets of November 2012 which urged Unionists to lobby Naomi Long (an MP, not a Belfast councilor) on the flag issue. That was before the protests; once they started, the DUP and UUP were not particularly made welcome by the organisers and duly distanced themselves in due course (though not terribly rapidly or visibly). The inarticulate demeanour of the protest leaders limited their ability to gain widespread and active support, and the electoral impact in the 2014 elections was far from clear, with Alliance’s vote slipping a bit but the DUP’s slipping more.

The report makes two recommendations – one to political leaders to remember their responsibility for leading communication and conflict resolution, rather than exacerbating division, and to put forward a clear peace plan (something that has been partly implemented in the year or so since publication); and one more interesting from the public policy point of view, that funding for Loyalist community work needs also to be directed

to train community members in the art of advocacy: achieving a manner in which arguments are made that relate to evidence and also policymaking. Any future work must turn senses of alienation into a process of evidenced claims and also to place those concerns within an equality framework. Loyalists have articulate spokespersons who advocate for a living wage, argue for leadership to challenge poor educational performance and highlight the need for republicans and nationalist to better understand their cultural identity. Unfortunately, those types of voices are burdened by funding shortages, internal feuding and the actions of those beyond. The overall aim must be to shift from anecdote and rumour into a politics in which reconciliation invokes identity raising but also identity sharing. Northern Ireland will remain within a power-sharing dispensation and all communities must be cognisant of that.

This is not the only case I’ve seen of this sort of problem. It’s terribly easy for donors to fund cross-community dialogue, bringing both or all sides together; it’s also straightforward enough to fund cultural celebrations, even if these end up being one-sided and exclusive. Funding the better articulation of political beliefs you don’t agree with is a tough but necessary stretch.

See note on methodology

Very slim pickings here. The most popular work of fiction with much of a San Marino presence – and it’s a lot less than half of the book, which is mainly set in Milan – an alternate history in which the USSR won the Cold War, and our plucky young heroes attempt subversion. Fifth in a series of typically doorstop novels, it is:

The Gladiator, vol 5 of the Crosstime Traffic series, by Harry Turtledove

I suspect that the best I can do – other than guidebooks and travel books, which I have to say feel like cheating – is a 1976 Mills and Boon romance, a genre that hasn’t figured very much in these lists. The blurb is enlightening:

Clare Yorke arrives in the tiny Italian republic of San Marino expecting to marry Bruno Cavour. But when Bruno and his family decide that marriage isn’t such a good idea, Clare is stranded in a foreign country with no job and no fiancé.

Imagine that! No fiancé!

To her rescue arrives the handsome Tarquin Roscuro. He offers Clare a post and takes her mind off Bruna. Once again, Clare finds herself falling in love. But will her affections be returned? Can she hope for marriage? Or does another woman, namely the attractive Jaquetta Fiore, stand in the way of a passionate romance?

It’s difficult to imagine how this book will end: the plot appears utterly unpredictable to me. If you want to find out what happens to Clare, you must read:

Smoke Into Flame, by “Jane Arbor” [Eileen Norah Owbridge]

Grateful for any other leads. (I think.)

Just one more to go…

• Life of a Russian internet troll
  
  Kremlin-sponsored AstroTurf!
  (tags: russia internet )
• Russia’s top 120 lies about Ukraine
  
  Latest in a long list.
  (tags: russia ukraine )
• Dispatches: Thirty One Hours Marooned at Azerbaijan’s Airport
  
  Baku bars my friend & ex-colleague @giorgi_gogia.
  (tags: )