The best known books set in each country: Somalia

Posted on 31 August 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Somalia (including Somaliland).

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War	Mark Bowden	68,067	4,798
A House in the Sky	Amanda Lindhout	70,898	1,187
Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth	Warsan Shire	21,170	513
In the Company of Heroes: The Personal Story Behind Black Hawk Down	Michael J. Durant	5,877	533
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head	Warsan Shire	9,123	239
Desert Dawn	Waris Dirie	4,340	468
Call Me American: A Memoir	Abdi Nor Iftin	4,561	233
The Orchard of Lost Souls	Nadifa Mohamed	1,822	216

I’m going to start providing summaries of the winning books (should probably have done that much sooner). Black Hawk Down, published in 1999, is about the unsuccessful 1993 US military raid in Mogadishu to try and capture a local warlord. It was later adapted into a film directed by Ridley Scott.

It’s a bit unfortunate that three of the top four books, including the top two, are about violent foreign experiences of Somalia rather than giving voice to the people themselves, and I also freely admit that I’ve stretched a point with Warsan Shire’s two poetry collections – on a quick scan, they did seem to be well grounded in Somalia as a location, but I did not go through and tally pages. The Orchard of Lost Souls represents Somaliland here; hopefully some day we’ll be able to tally it separately.

I disqualified ten books. Ayaan Hirsi Ali leaves Somalia early in her autobiography, Infidel, and does not return; the second volume of her autobiography, Nomad has her travelling further afield. Desert Flower, Waris Dine’s better known book, is mostly set in the UK. When Stars Are Scattered, by Victoria Jamieson, and City of Thorns, by Ben Rawlence, are mostly in Kenya. Don’t Tell Me You’re Afraid, by Giuseppe Catozzella, is about the refugee experience en route to Europe. Djibouti, by Elmore Leonard, is mostly set in, er, Djibouti. Nadifa Mohamed’s The Fortune Men is mainly set in the UK, and her Black Mamba Boy is mostly in Yemen. Ilhan Omar’s This Is What America Looks Like is more about her life in the USA than her life before.

Next up: Senegal, Romania, Guatemala and the Netherlands.

The best known books set in each country: Chile

Posted on 24 August 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Chile.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
The House of the Spirits	Isabel Allende	305,449	14,895
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair	Pablo Neruda	79,849	4,108
Violeta	Isabel Allende	101,789	1,330
Of Love and Shadows	Isabel Allende	36,211	3,327
Inés of My Soul	Isabel Allende	32,358	2,778
Maya’s Notebook	Isabel Allende	32,002	1,246
My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile	Isabel Allende	11,999	2,589
100 Love Sonnets	Pablo Neruda	18,311	1,695

There’s a very clear winner here, and equally clear domination of the list by a single author – and that doesn’t include the books by Isabel Allende that I disqualified because as far as I could tell there was not sufficient Chile-based content; they were Daughter of Fortune, Eva Luna, Paula, A Long Petal of the Sea, Portrait in Sepia, City of the Beasts, The Stories of Eva Luna, In the Midst of Winter and The Infinite Plan.

I disqualified another six, which I think all have Chilean authors but are not set there. Roberto Bolaño may be Chilean, but his two best known books, 2666 and The Savage Detectives, are set in Mexico. When We Cease to Understand the World, by Benjamín Labatut, is about scientists globally. I credited In Patagonia, by Bruce Chatwin, to Argentina a while back. Luis Sepúlveda’s The Old Man Who Read Love Stories is explicitly set in Ecuador, and his The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly sounds like it could be set anywhere with seagulls.

I admit I’ve stretched a point with a couple of those that I allowed onto the list: I suspect that Neruda’s poetry is not full of explicit geographical references, but it can hardly be set anywhere other than Chile; and I gave Maya’s Notebook the benefit of the doubt as the framing narrative is definitely in Chile even if most of the book is flashbacks.

That was unexpectedly tough, and I think they will get tougher as I go on. Next up are Somalia, Senegal, Romania and Guatemala.

The best known books set in each country: Kazakhstan

Posted on 17 August 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Kazakhstan.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich	Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	122,253	138,542
The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years	Chingiz Aitmatov	7,918	594
How I Learned Geography	Uri Shulevitz	5389	739
Half a World Away	Cynthia Kadohata	2,089	260
Apples Are from Kazakhstan: The Land that Disappeared	Christopher Robbins	1,309	264
A Shadow Intelligence	Oliver Harris	1,821	84
The Dead Lake	Hamid Ismailov	959	112
The Faculty of Useless Knowledge	Yury Dombrovsky	376	186

I was a bit surprised by the winner this time, but it is indeed firmly set in Kazakhstan, so it matches my criterion. It’s really unusual for such a well-known book to have more LibraryThing owners than Goodreads raters – the ratio is usually more like 10 or 20 to 1 in favour of GR. It’s also getting increasingly rare that I have read the top book in the list – the last one was Sri Lanka a month ago, the one before that was Saudi Arabia in April.

There is a distinct lack of Kazakh writers on this list. Chingiz Aitmatoc is Kyrgyz, and Hamis Ismailov is Uzbek (though born in what is now Kyrgyzstan). The top Kazakh writer from my survey was some way below my threshold; it is Mukhamet Shayakhmetov, whose best known book is The Silent Steppe.

I’m a little uncertain about a couple of these. Half a World Away starts in the USA, and A Shadow Intelligence in the UK. But my assessment from what I could fins about them online is that probably more than 50% is set in Kazakhstan in both cases.

I disqualified ten books this time. The top book that I disqualified just has one character from Kazakhstan, and as far as I can tell isn’t set there at all; it is The Zahir by Paulo Coelho. Most of the others cover Kazakhstan as part of Central Asia, of the old Mongol Empire, or indeed the whole post-Soviet region. They were The Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan; Bones of the Hills, by Conn Iggulden; The New Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan; Sovietistan, by Erika Fatland; The Lost Heart of Asia, by Colin Thubron (which I have read); The Border, by Erika Flatland; On the Trail of Genghis Khan, by Tim Cope; The Catch Me if You Can, by Jessica Nabongo; and

The Tombs by Clive Cussler and The Good Angel of Death, by Andreï Kourkov, both have their protagonists on odysseys that end up in Kazakhstan, much more than half way through the book. Jamilia, by Chingiz Aitmatov, is set in Kyrgyzstan, but I think some taggers are confused about the difference. (I don’t think any of Ken MacLeod’s books qualifies either, and anyway GR and LT users have not tagged them.)

Coming next: Chile, Somalia, Senegal and then our first European country for a while, Romania.

The best known books set in each country: Chad

Posted on 10 August 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Chad.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
The Roots of Heaven	Romain Gary	2,653	526
Rain School	James Rumford	803	472
Told by Starlight in Chad	Joseph Brahim Seid	160	36
African Rice Heart	Emily Star Wilkens	72	10
To Catch a Dictator: The Pursuit and Trial of Hissène Habré	Reed Brody	55	10
The Trial of Hissène Habré: How the People of Chad Brought a Tyrant to Justice	Celeste Hicks	18	6
France’s Wars in Chad: Military Intervention and Decolonization in Africa	Nathaniel K. Powell	7	5
The Plagues of Friendship	Sem Miantoloum Beasnael	4	4

This was unusually tough. Several users of both Goodreads and LibraryThing have used the “chad” tag for a lot of their books which have absolutely nothing to do with the country, and it must therefore refer to something else. Several political analyses had a handful of owners on LibraryThing, but none on Goodreads. This is the first time that I’ve had to go down to single figures on either system. I’m not going to list the disqualified books because there are too many of them and most of them are completely irrelevant.

Today’s winner was famously adapted into a 1958 film starring Errol Flynn, and it sounds interesting enough to track down. Two Chadian writers appear in today’s list. As well as the non-fiction, there’s also a high-scoring children’s book and a missionary testimony. But I think that all in all, Chad is the most literarily obscure country I have yet covered. I am sure that there will be more.

Next up: Kazakhstan, Chile, Somalia and Senegal.

The best known books set in each country: Malawi

Posted on 3 August 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Malawi.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope	William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer	31,842	2,808
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (for younger readers)	William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer	11,205	1,722
The Lower River	Paul Theroux	2,957	375
Galimoto	Karen Lynn Williams	332	880
The Heaven Shop	Deborah Ellis	1,233	234
Laugh with the Moon	Shana Burg	1,148	170
Venture to the Interior	Laurens van der Post	296	331
Jungle Lovers	Paul Theroux	210	110

This week’s winner, and second place, go to the inventor William Kamkwamba whose memoir in its original form is far ahead of its own YA version, which in turn is way ahead of everything else. Apparently it is set reading in a number of American educational institutions, which must help the numbers.

Apart from Kamkwamba, whose story is co-written with an American journalist, there is no Malawian writer in the above list. The top Malawian writer that I found is the poet Upile Chisala, but I’m afraid I disqualified her top book, soft magic, because it seems to be more about the diaspora experience, though I may be incorrect. Her other books, nectar and a fire like you seem to have more Malawian content but were just pipped by Paul Theroux’s Jungle Lovers.

Speaking of which, I had forgotten that American author Paul Theroux has a personal connection with Malawi. One of his sons was in the same year as me at the same Cambridge college. We did not know each other at all well – I think the one time we particularly interacted was just after our graduation, when I found myself moving into a college room that he was hastily vacating.

I disqualified eleven books for being clearly less than 50% set in Malawi. I have noted soft magic above; the others are Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood, by Alexandra Fuller; Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town, by Paul Theroux (again); The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After, by Clemantine Wamariya; Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, by Alexandra Fuller; Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone, by Martin Dugard; Long Way Down, by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman; In a Strange Room, by Damon Galgu; Thin Air: A Ghost Story, by Michelle Paver (which seems to be set entirely in the Himalayas); My Other Life, by Paul Theroux (yet again); and The Ukimwi Road: From Kenya to Zimbabwe, by Dervla Murphy.

Coming next: Zambia next door, then Chad, Kazakhstan and Chile.

The best known books set in each country: Taiwan

Posted on 27 July 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Taiwan. I did reflect on whether or not Taiwan counts as a country, but I plan to include a few other contested cases as I get down the list, so here we go.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
The Astonishing Color of After	Emily X.R. Pan	33,411	1,306
Loveboat, Taipei	Abigail Hing Wen	20,283	415
Notes of a Crocodile	Qiu Miaojin	8,397	487
Taipei	Tao Lin	7,857	420
Bestiary	K-Ming Chang	3,973	342
The Membranes	Chi Ta-wei	7,086	188
Dumpling Days	Grace Lin	2,687	305
The Man with the Compound Eyes	Wu Ming-Yi	3,180	236

There were a couple of these that I was not certain about, but it’s clear that The Astonishing Color of After is mostly set in Taiwan, and that it’s ahead on Goodreads and way ahead on LibraryThing.

Despite its title, I wasn’t completely sure if more than 50% of Tao Lin’s Taipei is set on the island, and likewise Bestiary which seems to be the reminiscences of Taiwanese-American women, but mainly about Taiwan. I’ve given them the benefit of the doubt.

I did exclude half a dozen. Stay True by Hua Hsu, The Year of the Dog by Grace Lin, Fresh Off the Boat by Eddie Huang and Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho all seem to be entirely about the Taiwanese-American emigrant experience. Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung is mainly set on the mainland. Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu is set both on the mainland and in the USA.

Next up: Malawi, Zambia, Chad and Kazakhstan.

The best known books set in each country: Sri Lanka

Posted on 20 July 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Sri Lanka.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
The Fountains of Paradise	Arthur C. Clarke	31,256	3,686
Anil’s Ghost	Michael Ondaatje	18,593	4,118
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida	Shehan Karunatilaka	54,665	1,257
Wave	Sonali Deraniyagala	22,405	939
Running in the Family	Michael Ondaatje	9,699	1,781
The Tea Planter’s Wife	Dinah Jefferies	21,637	608
You’re Invited	Amanda Jayatissa	24,448	457
Funny Boy	Shyam Selvadurai	8,648	887

You may quibble that The Fountains of Paradise is mostly set on a fictional island called Taprobane; but Taprobane is in almost exactly the same place as Sri Lanka in our world, and it’s pretty clear where the writer had in mind when he was writing the book. Also I love it.

It’s surprising for the top book on my metric to be only in second place on both Goodreads and LibraryThing. Indeed there is an unusual divide between the two systems here: Michael Ondaatje is relatively way more popular than usual on LT, while the women writers on the list are relatively way more popular than usual on GR.

I must say that the book I most want to read off this list is probably Wave, which sounds interesting but tough, as Huck Finn said about Pilgrim’s Progress. I am not completely sure if it passes my 50% test, but it seems more likely than not.

I disqualified only two books this time (see also China, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, Cameroon and Australia). They were both by Michael Ondaatje, who attracts “sri lanka” tags for obvious reasons. One was The English Patient, which actually outranked everything else by miles, but has no internal reference to Sri Lanka at all, and the other was The Cat’s Table, which would otherwise have been just below Anil’s Ghost and just above The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.

Coming next: Taiwan, Malawi, Zambia and Chad.

The best known books set in each country: Burkina Faso

Posted on 13 July 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Burkina Faso.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
American Spy	Lauren Wilkinson	30,165	907
The Water Princess	Susan Verde	3,269	1,113
Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman	Malidoma Patrice Somé	1,733	382
The Weight of Sand: My 450 Days Held Hostage in the Sahara	Edith Blais	4409	48
Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle	Thomas Sankara	1,725	101
Ritual: Power, Healing and Community	Malidoma Patrice Somé	548	174
The Red Bicycle	Jude Isabella	429	165
Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution, 1983-87	Thomas Sankara	498	131

This was surprisingly easy to compile. The figure of the short-lived 1980s president of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, looms over the country’s cultural footprint; two of his political texts are on this list, and the protagonist of this week’s winning novel fictionally seduces him while colluding in his overthrow. We also have two children’s books, two anthropological studies, and a real life hostage drama.

I disqualified only three books this week. I don’t know why anyone tagged Flowers from the Storm, by Laura Kinsale, as being relevant to Burkina Faso; it seems to be set in England and Wales. (Possibly the person using the tag acquired or read their copy of the book while travelling there.) Two other books cover Burkina Faso along with other African countries: Empire of Cotton: A Global History, by Sven Beckert, and White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa, by Susan Williams.

Coming next: Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Malawi and Zambia.

The best known books set in each country: Mali

Posted on 6 July 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Mali.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
Sahara	Clive Cussler	60,005	4,040
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts	Joshua Hammer	12,095	1,721
Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali	(anonymous)	2,889	748
Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years With a Midwife in Mali	Kris Holloway	4,958	399
Segu	Maryse Condé	1,973	641
The Black Pages	Nnedi Okorafor	4,215	90
I Lost My Tooth In Africa	Penda Diakité	517	629
The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu: The Quest for This Storied City and the Race to Save its Treasures	Charlie English	1,010	252

After a couple of countries which were harder work, I was glad that Mali turned out to be fairly straightforward – the city of Timbuktu gives it a certain brand recognition. I wasn’t completely sure about this week’s winner at first, a typically convoluted Cussler tale which climaxes with an absurd revelation about the fate of Abraham Lincoln, but a speedy page count revealed that it does indeed appear to be more than 50% set in Mali, so it qualifies. Glad to see the traditional Malian epic Sundiata doing well also.

I did disqualify ten books. With a particularly heavy heart, I ruled out Scales of Gold by Dorothy Dunnett, because although more than half of it is set in West Africa, I think less than half is set in what’s now Mali. Tremendous book though.

Similarly, I was not quite sure about Masquerade, by O.O. Sangoyomi, but I think that more than half of it is set in the fictional city of Ṣàngótẹ̀ and I’m pretty sure that’s meant to be in what’s now Nigeria. The Bitter Side of Sweet, by Tara Sullivan, is set in Côte d’Ivoire. The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill, is set in Canada. Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law, by Haben Girma, is set in the USA and the protagonist is Eritrean by origin, so I don’t know why people connect it with Mali. The Green Road, by Anne Enright, is mostly set in Ireland.

The Shadow of the Sun, by Ryszard Kapuściński, Leo Africanus, by Amin Maalouf, Sahara, by Michael Palin and China’s Second Continent, by Howard W. French, all cover numerous countries, with much less than half of each book set in Mali.

Coming next: Burkina Faso, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Malawi.

The best known books set in each country: Syria

Posted on 29 June 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Syria.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow	Zoulfa Katouh	91,116	890
Sea Prayer	Khaled Hosseini	59,241	818
L’Arabe du futur 2	Riad Sattouf	11,251	430
Come, Tell Me How You Live	Agatha Christie Mallowan	4,918	965
Death Is Hard Work	Khaled Khalifa	4,548	291

Only five this time. As with Niger a few weeks ago, I had to disqualify a lot of books (sixteen in this case) which are (at least in part) about Syria, but not actually set there, most of which dealt with the experience of Syria refugees trying to make their way to and in other countries during the recent war. My rule is that if I have had to disqualify a large number of books before I reach the fifth that is actually set in the country, I leave it there. Normally I would list the top eight books.

I’m glad to see a novel by a Syrian woman actually topping the chart this week, though it does way better on Goodreads. You may be surprised to see Agatha Christie making an appearance; this is a non-fiction account of her experiences observing her husband’s archaeological digging, and it is the top book set in Syria on LibraryThing, though much further behind on Goodreads.

I ruled out the first volume of the graphic novel series L’Arabe du future, which is set in several different countries. However the second volume does seem to be mainly set in Syria, so it’s on the list. Both are on my list of BDs to buy.

The top book on Goodreads with ‘Syria’ tags was Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers, and the top on LibraryThing was The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker, both of which are about the experience of Syrian immigrants in the USA; one non-fiction, the other fantasy. There were a few other non-fiction books looking at the region as a whole. I won’t list them all.

Coming next: Mali, Burkina Faso, Sri Lanka and (edge case, but it’s listed as a separate country in most lists) Taiwan.

The best known books set in each country: North Korea

Posted on 22 June 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
The Orphan Master’s Son	Adam Johnson	101,483	4,036
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea	Barbara Demick	90,343	3,318
Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West	Blaine Harden	68,964	1,854
The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea	Axie Oh	75,437	1,291
The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story	Hyeonseo Lee	93,135	1,031
In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom	Yeonmi Park	90,747	993
A River in Darkness: One Man’s Escape from North Korea	Masaji Ishikawa	58,730	924
The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War	David Halberstam	8,945	1,873

This is one I prepared earlier, in a sense, in that I crunched the numbers for both parts of Korea back in November, and I imagine that they have not changed much since. There’s a pretty consistent theme here, whether the writers are Korean or not; the only one I’m not sure about is The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, but my research indicates that it’s set in what is now the North rather than the South. It and this week’s winner, The Orphan Master’s Son, are the only two books on the list which are presented as fiction. Also I’m allowing The Coldest Winter as set on both sides of the line.

As noted previously, I disqualified the top two books tagged ‘Korea’ on LibraryThing and Goodreads; they were Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, which is mainly set in Japan, and Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner, mainly set in the USA. Further down the table, The Name Jar, by Yangsook Choi, is also set in the USA.

Next: Syria, Mali, Burkina Faso and Sri Lanka.

The best known books set in each country: Australia

Posted on 15 June 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Australia.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

(Scheduling this to go live quite early, to catch the Australians.)

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
Big Little Lies	Liane Moriarty	1,076,575	7,890
The Rosie Project	Graeme Simsion	580,241	8,169
The Husband’s Secret	Liane Moriarty	707,897	6,692
The Light Between Oceans	M. L. Stedman	470,982	7,908
The Thorn Birds	Colleen McCullough	359,464	7,901
What Alice Forgot	Liane Moriarty	498,692	4,987
Nine Perfect Strangers	Liane Moriarty	461,968	4,160
I Am the Messenger / The Messenger	Markus Zusak	166,742	6,958

I confess that I had not heard of Liane Moriarty, but she clearly scores very well here, with Big Little Lies far ahead on Goodreads and fourth in a close race on LibraryThing. Sorry to those who were hoping to see Nevil Shute (On the Beach was 21st in my ranking and A Town Like Alice 23rd) or Peter Carey (True History of the Kelly Gang was 30th, Oscar and Lucinda 31st) on the list.

I disqualified only two books. I was puzzled to see The Book Thief (which won in Germany) topping the overall poll, but I had forgotten that Markus Zusak is actually Australian. And more than half of The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton is set in England.

Next: North Korea, Syria, Mali and Burkina Faso.

The best known books set in each country: Niger

Posted on 8 June 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Niger.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
Shadow Speaker	Nnedi Okorafor	2,696	448
In Sorcery’s Shadow: A Memoir of Apprenticeship among the Songhay of Niger	Paul Stoller	278	76
Don’t Spill the Milk!	Stephen Davies	226	54
Harmattan	Gavin Weston	242	26
Nomads of Niger	Carol Beckwith and Marion van Offelen	31	83

This was a very difficult tabulation. There are a lot of books about West Africa, or just Africa in general. There’s a certain amount of confusion between Niger and Nigeria. There are books about travelling to Timbuktu (which is in Mali), or the Songhay Empire (which was also mainly in Mali), or following Mungo Park (who did the whole river Niger). I excluded 28 books before I got to the fifth one actually set in Niger, and for once I’m not going to list them all; some of them have very spurious Nigerien connections indeed.

The winner – for the second time, see also Sudan – is Nnedi Okorafor, who very clearly sets Shadow Speaker in a future Niger.

The top book set in Niger by a Nigerien author that I was able to identify is Sarraounia : Le drame de la reine magicienne, by Abdoulaye Mamani.

Incidentally, Niger has the second lowest median age of any country in the world, ahead of only the Central African Republic.

Next up: Australia, North Korea, Syria and indeed Mali.

The best known books set in each country: Venezuela

Posted on 1 June 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Venezuela.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
Dragons in the Waters	Madeleine L’Engle	4,810	1,393
Green Mansions	William Henry Hudson	3,251	1,811
Doña Bárbara	Rómulo Gallegos	5,804	517
It Would Be Night in Caracas	Karina Sainz Borgo	7,368	241
The Sun and the Void	Gabriela Romero Lacruz	3,699	408
In Trouble Again: A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon	Redmond O’Hanlon	1,558	638
Ya̦nomamö: The Fierce People	Napoleon A. Chagnon	1,327	705
The Caiman	Maria Eugenia Manrique	2,393	120

This table sees one of the biggest variations between LibraryThing and Goodreads that I have yet seen. The top-ranked book on LibraryThing is fifth on Goodreads; the top-ranked book on Goodreads is seventh on LibraryThing; the winner on aggregate is second on one system and third on the other. Even bigger divergences would have appeared if I had gone further down the table.

And of all my childhood favourites, I did not expect to see Madeleine L’Engle, of A Wrinkle in Time fame, winning this week’s prize. But indeed, Dragons in the Waters is about a kid going to Venezuela to take over his inheritance, both natural and supernatural.

Venezuelan writers pick up half of the spots this week. Surprisingly, only It Would Be Night in Caracas is directly about the current political situation.

Of the others, The Sun and the Void is set in a fantasy country that as far as I can tell the author wants us to read as Venezuela. The Ya̦nomamö live in both Venezuela and Brazil, but Venezuela has adopted Chagnon’s book, so I’m happy to go along with that.

I disqualified seven books. A Long Petal of the Sea, by Isabel Allende, is mainly set in Spain and Chile, and only in Venezuela at the end. The General in His Labyrinth, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is about the end of the life of Simon Bolivar, in what is now Colombia. Open Veins of Latin America, by Eduardo Galeano, is about the entire continent. Bruchko, by Bruce Olson, unpleasantly straddles the border with Colombia but seems to be more on the other side. When Time Stopped, by Ariana Neumann, is about a Venezuelan discovering her family’s experiences during the Holocaust. Bolívar: American Liberator, by Marie Arana, covers Simon Bolivar’s life and career all over the region. And Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln, by Margarita Engle, sounds very sweet but is set mainly in the USA.

Coming next: Niger, Australia, North Korea and Syria.

The best known books set in each country: Nepal

Posted on 25 May 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Nepal.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster	Jon Krakauer	543,638	14,827
The Snow Leopard	Peter Matthiessen	19,544	2,844
Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal	Conor Grennan	23,134	1,102
The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest	Anatoli Boukreev	17,718	1,189
Breathless	Amy McCulloch	25,286	563
Annapurna, First Conquest of an 8000-Meter Peak: (26,493 Feet)	Maurice Herzog	10,203	1,078
Touching My Father’s Soul: A Sherpa’s Journey to the Top of Everest	Jamling Tenzing Norgay	2,703	372
Annapurna: A Woman’s Place	Arlene Blum	2,941	256

Into Thin Air is the most popular book on either LT or GR on any of these individual national lists since Night by Elie Wiesel, thirteen countries ago.

Only two of these eight books are fiction. I have not been tracking systematically, but that seems low.

Despite that fact that it has a population of over 30 million, there is only one activity in Nepal that is of interest to most writers. Three of these eight books are about Everest (including the only one by an actual Nepalese writer), two about Annapurna, and one (Breathless) about a fictional mountain peak.

I wasn’t completely sure about We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies, which begins in Tibet and ends in Canada, but as far as I can tell the sections about being a Tibetan refugee in Nepal amount to more than half of the book. (Just to make it crystal clear: Tibet is an “Autonomous Region” of the People’s Republic of China, but Nepal is an independent state.)

I excluded nine books for being insufficiently Nepalese in setting, and in most cases they are very firmly set elsewhere, but close enough for readers to get confused. The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai, is mostly set in India. So is Sold, by Patricia McCormick. The protagonist of Peak, by Roland Smith, climbs Everest from the Tibetan side. Tintin in Tibet, by Hergé, speaks for itself. Himalaya, by Michael Palin, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, by John Wood, and Video Night in Kathmandu and Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East, by Pico Iyer, all cover numerous countries including Nepal. Colin Thubron starts in Nepal but leaves just before the half-way point of To a Mountain in Tibet.

Coming next: Venezuela, Niger, Australia and North Korea.

The best known books set in each country: Cameroon

Posted on 18 May 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Cameroon.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
How Beautiful We Were	Imbolo Mbue	18,281	726
The Informationist	Taylor Stevens	11,303	950
A Zoo in My Luggage	Gerald Durrell	5,281	959
The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut	Nigel Barley	3,375	623
The Bafut Beagles	Gerald Durrell	2,022	709
Les impatientes	Djaïli Amadou Amal	8,714	105
Houseboy	Ferdinand Oyono	2,295	372
The Overloaded Ark	Gerald Durrell	1,418	472

This was one of the easiest runs I have had for a while. Gerald Durrell does well, and I remember reading those books when I was 13 and loving them; and I also remember really enjoying The Innocent Anthropologist when I was a bit older. But I’m glad that the top spot goes to a Cameroonian woman writer, and I’m interested that a novel by another Cameroonian woman writer, that hasn’t even been translated into English, also makes the top eight. I must add also that The Informationist sounds like great fun.

I’m used to a certain fluctuation between the popularity of books on both systems, but the relative LibraryThing invisibility of Les impatientes by Djaïli Amadou Amal is remarkable. It’s the third most widely owned of these books on Goodreads, and not even in the top fifteen on LT.

I disqualified two books, neither of which was a difficult decision. Behold the Dreamers, also by Imbolo Mbue, is about Cameroonian immigrants in New York, and seems to be set entirely in the USA. The Marco Effect, by Jussi Adler-Olsen, is a Danish crime novel with a subplot set in Cameroon, but it’s much less than half of the book as far as I can tell.

Other countries where I only disqualified two books: China, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa.
Countries where I only disqualified one book: India, the USA, Nigeria, Russia, Iran, the UK, Spain, Iraq.
Countries where I have not disqualified any books: Japan, Egypt, DRC, Vietnam, Colombia.

Coming next: Nepal, Venezuela, Niger and then Australia.

The best known books set in each country: Côte d’Ivoire

Posted on 11 May 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Côte d’Ivoire, also known in English as Ivory Coast (personally I take the position that you call people and countries by the names they wish to be known by).

I have not been to Côte d’Ivoire myself, though I have advised its government on a couple of occasions.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
Aya	Marguerite Abouet	6,986	664
The Bitter Side of Sweet	Tara Sullivan	3,646	277
Aya of Yop City	Marguerite Abouet	2,421	260
Too Small to Ignore: Why Children Are the Next Big Thing	Wess Stafford	1,142	505
Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village	Sarah Erdman	1,784	312
Aya: Life in Yop City (Aya #1-3)	Marguerite Abouet	1,683	166
Aya: The Secrets Come Out	Marguerite Abouet	1,331	154
Aya: Love in Yop City (Aya #4-6)	Marguerite Abouet	885	127

So, I confess I had not heard of the popular graphic novel sequence by Marguerite Abouet about her heroine Aya, set in Côte d’Ivoire in the 1970s, but I’ll have to look out for them now. It’s also nice to see a success for the bande dessinée genre.

If I count correctly, this is the sixth country where seven of the top eight books are by women, joining Canada, South Korea, Kenya, the United Kingdom and Iran.

I disqualified eleven books. For about half of them, this was because they were set in or about a number of countries including Côte d’Ivoire, but much less than half set there. This knocked out Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert, The Fortunes of Africa by Martin Meredith, Dictatorland by Paul Kenyon, Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus by David Quammen, and Africa Is Not a Country by Margy Burns Knight.

I really hesitated with The Suns of Independence by Ahmadou Kourouma, which is set between two fictional countries, the Socialist Republic of Nikinai and Ebony Coast. Kourouma himself was firmly Ivoirian, but in the end I feel he deliberately set the book in a fictional place which is as closely related to Côte d’Ivoire as, say, the Shire is to England.

There were a couple with very little Ivoirian material, and I fear that people tagging them on LT / GR get mixed up between West African countries. Tété-Michel Kpomassie, author of An African in Greenland, is from Togo. Allah Is Not Obliged, by Ahmadou Kourouma, does start in Côte d’Ivoire but is mostly set in Liberia. The Dragons, the Giant, the Women by Wayétu Moore is set in Liberia and the USA. Standing Heavy, by Gauz, is set among Ivoirians in Paris. Arab Jazz, by Karim Miské, is set among Arabs in Paris; Miské was born in Côte d’Ivoire, but identifies as Mauritanian-French.

Next up are Cameroon, Nepal, Venezuela and Niger.

The best known books set in each country: Madagascar

Posted on 4 May 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Madagascar.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
Hot Ice	Nora Roberts	17,304	1,468
Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia	David Graeber	2,145	297
Red Island House	Andrea Lee	2,894	206
Ghost of Chance	William S. Burroughs	1,168	357
The Aye-Aye and I	Gerald Durrell	1,286	284
Return to the Enchanted Island	Johary Ravaloson	830	131
Thea Stilton and the Madagascar Madness	Thea Stilton [Elisabetta Dami]	723	146
The Pirate’s Son	Geraldine McCaughrean	247	240

There are a couple of authors I didn’t expect to see here, including in particular Nora Roberts; I checked, and yes, more than half of Hot ice is actually set on Madagascar, so it qualifies for my top spot this week. It sounds like rather a laugh; even diehard Nora Roberts fans seem to be a bit embarrassed by it. I am not 100% sure about Return to the Enchanted Island, a substantial part of which is set in France, but it was the only book by a Malagasy author that scored at all well.

The Pirate Enlightenment book sounds really interesting too, about the intersection of Enlightenment ideology with the real life Malagasy pirates of the eighteenth century.

I disqualified seven books. Six of them are set in various countries with Madagascar occupying less than 50% of the text, sometimes much less; those were Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond; Last Chance to See, by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine; Lost Empire, by Clive Cussler; Flashman’s Lady, by George MacDonald Fraser (this surprised me; all the memorable bits of the book are set on Madagascar, but Flashman doesn’t actually get there until almost two thirds of the way through); A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth, by Samantha Weinberg (also surprised me, but the author ranges all over the Western Indian Ocean); and In Bibi’s Kitchen: The Recipes and Stories of Grandmothers from the Eight African Countries That Touch the Indian Ocean, by Hawa Hassan. I also disqualified The Flanders Route, by Claude Simon, which has nothing to do with Madagascar except that the author was born there.

Next up: Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Nepal and Venezuela.

The best known books set in each country: Saudi Arabia

Posted on 27 April 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Saudi Arabia.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
The Quran		70,996	2,398
Princess	Jean Sasson	38,703	2,106
A Hologram for the King	Dave Eggers	29,290	1,771
Girls of Riyadh	Rajaa Alsanea	20,667	1,262
Finding Nouf	Zoë Ferraris	9,822	1,050
Princess Sultana’s Daughters	Jean Sasson	12,463	794
In the Land of Invisible Women	Qanta A. Ahmed	7,760	755
Princess Sultana’s Circle	Jean Sasson	8,739	551

I’m allowing the winner even though it is short on geographical detail, because there is absolutely no doubt as to which country it is written about, and many of the individual suras are tagged as being written in Medina or Mecca. Incidentally I had to add together a bunch of different LibraryThing editions which had not been combined, presumably for good reason; the real LT number must be much higher.

Apart from Dave Eggers, the other books are all by women, though only one (Girls of Riyadh) by a Saudi woman.

I disqualified half a dozen. I was a bit surprised to see The Power, by Naomi Alderman, topping the list – very little of the book is set in Saudi. I Am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes, Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and The Looming Tower, by Lawrence Wright, all cover many countries, with less than half of any of them being set in the Kingdom.

I was a bit surprised to find myself then excluding Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence, and Arabian Sands, by Wilfred Thesiger; but in fact the former is largely set on the territory of what is now Jordan (and when I get there I’ll do a strict page count to see if it’s over 50%) and the latter spends a lot of time in Oman and what are now the UAE, the core visits to the Rub’ al Khali taking up less than a hundred of the 320 pages of text.

Next up are Madagascar, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon and to my surprise Nepal, whose population is around the 30 million mark.

The best known books set in each country: Peru

Posted on 20 April 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Peru.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
Bel Canto	Ann Patchett	305,834	13,723
The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure	James Redfield	118,809	7,100
The Bridge of San Luis Rey	Thornton Wilder	37,164	5,058
Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man’s Miraculous Survival	Joe Simpson	62,315	2,763
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter	Mario Vargas Llosa	22,064	2,788
The Time of the Hero	Mario Vargas Llosa	25,982	1,910
Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time	Mark Adams	20,164	1,172
Conversation in the Cathedral	Mario Vargas Llosa	10,654	1,341

These are pretty solid numbers, after a few countries which scored less well.

Slightly controversially, perhaps, I’m allowing the top spot to Bel Canto. Even though it is not explicitly set in Peru, everyone agrees that it’s based on the 1996-97 hostage crisis at the Japanese embassy in Lima, so I think it qualifies. I was a bit surprised to find that the book in second spot, The Celestine Prophecy, is also set in Peru – I don’t feel the slightest inclination to read it – but apparently that’s the case. The others are much less surprising, with the recently departed Mario Vargas Llosa filling a lot of the spots as you go down the table.

I disqualified the following:

Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, by Tracy Kidder – only two of its five parts is set in Peru
The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa – set in the Dominican Republic
The Bad Girl, by Mario Vargas Llosa – set in various countries
Inés of My Soul, by Isabel Allende – only one part set in Peru
The War of the End of the World, by Mario Vargas Llosa – set in Brazil

People seem to have a tendency to slap the ‘Peru’ tag onto books by Mario Vargas Llosa, whether or not his country is represented in the actual content.

Incidentally, RTÉ recently ran a piece about how my great-great-great-grandfather became deputy governor of Huanta province in Peru, back in the 1770s. I have never been to any part of Latin America myself.

Coming next: Saudi Arabia, Madagascar, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon.

The best known books set in each country: Ghana

Posted on 13 April 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them (as far as I can tell) is set in Ghana.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
Homegoing	Yaa Gyasi	375,929	6,269
Anansi the Spider	Gerald McDermott	7,253	3,410
His Only Wife	Peace Adzo Medie	31,662	496
Remote Control	Nnedi Okorafor	18,205	755
Ghana Must Go	Taiye Selasi	12,122	834
Solo	Kwame Alexander	13,405	707
Emmanuel’s Dream	Laurie Ann Thompson	3,216	764
The Door of No Return	Kwame Alexander	6,828	332

Homegoing has a commanding lead here, especially on Goodreads, and it’s good to see Ghanaian authors penetrating the two systems.

I disqualified eight books, in some cases because they are mainly about the Ghanaian migrant experience and in others because they are actually about the process of migrating from Ghana. They were Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi; Maame, by Jessica George; Open Water, by Caleb Azumah Nelson; The Shadow of the Sun, by Ryszard Kapuściński; Pigeon English, by Stephen Kelman; Illegal, by Eoin Colfer; The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi, by Arthur Japin; and North to Paradise by Ousman Umar.

Next up: Peru, Saudi Arabia, Madagascar and Côte d’Ivoire.

The best known books set in each country: Mozambique

Posted on 6 April 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Mozambique.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
A Girl Named Disaster	Nancy Farmer	5,117	1,735
A Time to Die	Wilbur Smith	6,220	807
Sleepwalking Land	Mia Couto	5,775	466
A Treacherous Paradise	Henning Mankell	3,533	562
Chronicler of the Winds	Henning Mankell	2,775	708
Confession of the Lioness	Mia Couto	3,533	266
The Tuner of Silences	Mia Couto	2,615	213
Secrets in the Fire	Henning Mankell	2,060	253

This week’s winner is a Newbery-awarded novel about a girl trying to flee from Mozambique to Zimbabwe; as far as I can tell it takes more than half of the book for her to get across the border, so it qualifies.

I had no idea that Swedish writer Henning Mankell has a close personal link with Mozambique and lived there off and on for many years. I also had not heard of the great Mozambican writer Mia (short for Emilio) Couto, which is definitely my bad.

I disqualified a lot of books which are just generally set in southern Africa, or more specifically in a different country entirely. At the top was Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller, set in Zimbabwe, followed by The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell, Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town by Paul Theroux, The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After, by Clemantine Wamariya, Half a Life, by V.S. Naipaul, Kennedy’s Brain by Henning Mankell again, Scribbling the Cat by Alexandra Fuller again and A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn.

As we go down the list, I am increasingly finding that GR and LT users are tagging them into books which have little or nothing to do with the country in question. I may have to adapt my methodology in response.

Next up: Ghana, Peru, Saudi Arabia and Madagascar.

The best known books set in each country: Malaysia

Posted on 30 March 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Malaysia.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
The Night Tiger	Yangsze Choo	63,990	1,437
The Ghost Bride	Yangsze Choo	35,794	1,708
The Garden of Evening Mists	Tan Twan Eng	28,145	1,730
The Gift of Rain	Tan Twan Eng	17,211	1,215
Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World	Tom Wright and Bradley Hope	36,267	547
The House of Doors	Tan Twan Eng	18,160	539
The Storm We Made	Vanessa Chan	19,635	354
Black Water Sister	Zen Cho	10,481	647

I have not actually been to Malaysia, but it is where my father was born, so I was interested to see where this analysis brought me. In fact there are an unusually high number of Malaysian writers on the list – better yet, three of them are fantasy novels, including this week’s winner, The Night Tiger. And I am very glad to see Zen Cho make an appearance.

I disqualified nine books, all for the usual reason but all in different ways. In some of these cases I guess that GR and LT users are using the tag ‘malaysia’ because of the origin of the author rather than the setting of the book, in others it must simply be geographical confusion. Crazy Rich Asians, by Kevin Kwan, is mostly set in Singapore. The island in Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad, is clearly in what’s now Indonesia (as discussed). Daughter of the Moon Goddess, by Sue Lynn Tan, is set in a fantasy China. A Town Like Alice, by Nevil Shute, has many memorable sections in Malaysia, but in the end it is about Australia. The Glass Palace, by Amitav Ghosh, is set all over the region. Nothing But Blackened Teeth, by Cassandra Khaw, is set in Japan. Old Filth, by Jane Gardam, is set in England and India more than Malaysia. What My Bones Know, by Stephanie Foo, is set in the USA. And Sorcerer to the Crown, again by Zen Cho, is set in a fantasy UK.

Next up: Mozambique, Ghana, Peru and Saudi Arabia.

The best known books set in each country: Uzbekistan

Posted on 23 March 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

Earlier posts this week because I am travelling in Asia.

See here for methodology. This has been an unusual case, the first time (but probably not not the last) that I have closed the list at five, rather than my usual eight, because I have disqualified ten books for being less than 50% set in the target country and I don’t have time or energy to keep going.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
Cancer Ward	Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	17,294	3,750
Samarkand	Amin Maalouf	30,077	1,533
Moon Over Samarkand	Muḥammad al-Mansī Qandīl	13,933	33
The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor	Zahir ud-Din Muhammad Babur	746	476
Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia	Tom Bissell	707	239

The winner is one of the great Soviet-era novels, and I wonder to what extent the Tashkent setting comes through.

I confess that I am not 100% certain about Amin Maalouf’s Samarkand, but what I’ve seen online gives me a reasonable case to include it.

The usual ratios between Goodreads and LibraryThing users barely apply here. Moon Over Samarkand, a great Arabic novel which is partly set in Egypt but mostly (as far as I can tell) in Samarkand, has more than 400 times as many readers on GR as on LT.

On the other hand, the Memoirs of Babur, founder of the Mughal dynasty, have more than 60% as many LT readers as GR readers, which I think is a record. It doesn’t actually include all that much about his conquest of India, and concentrates on his early career in the future Uzbekistan.

There are many many books about Central Asia, but Chasing the Sea seems to be unusually Uzbekistan-heavy for that sub-genre.

The books I disqualified, in order, were:

The Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan
Bones of the Hills, by Conn Iggulden
The Great Game, by Peter Hopkirk
Imperium, by Ryszard Kapuściński
The Possessed, by Elif Batuman
Shadow of the Silk Road, by Colin Thubron
The Blackbird Girls, by Anne Blankman
Sovietistan, by Erika Fatland
The Lost Heart of Asia, by Colin Thubron
Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, by Peter Hopkirk
Tamerlane, by Justin Marozzi

Next up: Malaysia, Mozambique, Ghana and Peru.

The best known books set in each country: Ukraine

Posted on 16 March 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. My rule is to exclude books of which less than 50%, as far as I can tell, is actually set in the target country, but for Ukraine this is trickier than in some cases, so I may have made a couple of wrong calls here.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
Everything is Illuminated	Jonathan Safran Foer	181,991	14,539
The Mitten	Jan Brett	93,416	10,761
The Diamond Eye	Kate Quinn	170,157	1,425
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster	Adam Higginbotham	57,625	2,324
Death and the Penguin	Andrey Kurkov	20,056	2,116
The Last Green Valley	Mark T. Sullivan	65,498	431
The Fixer	Bernard Malamud	11,675	2,374
The White Guard	Mikhail Bulgakov	15,452	1,528

Shamefully, I have not read any of these. When I looked at this less systematically back in 2015, I got the same answer, Everything is Illuminated way out in front, followed by Jan Brett’s version of The Mitten.

I excluded The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov, which is definitely set in Russia; Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol, which is generally understood to be set in Russia; A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, by Marina Lewycka, which is set in England; Voices from Chernobyl, by Svetlana Alexievich, which is about the impact of Chernobyl in Belarus; and Bloodlands, by Timothy Snyder, which as far as I can tell concentrates on Poland.

I’m not 100% sure about The Last Green Valley, which is about Volksdeutsche fleeing Ukraine at the end of the Second World War, but it seems from online sources that it takes them a long time to get out, so I’ve counted it in.

The top Ukrainian writers on the list are Andrey Kurkov and Mikhail Bulgakov.

The Diamond Eye and The Last Green Valley both have strikingly impressive Goodreads ratings compared to their LibraryThing standing. Usually books have around ten times more readers on GR than LT, give or take; these two score over a hundred times higher on GR. My interpretation is that they (successfully) marketed themselves to Goodreads users.

Coming next: Uzbekistan, Malaysia, Mozambique and Ghana.

The Best Known Books Set in Each Country: Angola

Posted on 9 March 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. I am excluding books of which less than 50%, as far as I can tell, is actually set in Angola.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
A General Theory of Oblivion	José Eduardo Agualusa	8,003	475
Nzingha: Warrior Queen of Matamba, Angola, Africa, 1595	Patricia C. McKissack	3,641	988
Another Day of Life	Ryszard Kapuściński	5,650	581
The Book of Chameleons	José Eduardo Agualusa	4,820	513
The Land at the End of the World	António Lobo Antunes	3,076	450
Mayombe	Pepetela	2,393	134
Transparent City	Ondjaki	1,398	113
The Society of Reluctant Dreamers	José Eduardo Agualusa	1,316	116

The top books for Angola are the least well known of any country so far that I have covered. Bangladesh is in the same ball-park, but clearly ahead of Angola. Three of the books on my list, including the winner, are by José Eduardo Agualusa, who sounds like a very interesting writer.

I disqualified only three books. The Last Train to Zona Verde, by Paul Theroux, is set in South Afrtica and Namibia as well as Angola, and reaches Angola a few pages after the half-way point, so just misses my 50% criterion. O Filho de Mil Homens, by Valter hugo mãe (which doesn’t seem to have been translated into English; note the author’s unorthodox capitalisation) appears to be set entirely in Portugal, though the author is originally from Angola. The Return, by Dulce Maria Cardoso, is about the experience of the Portuguese settlers who evacuated in 1975, so most of it is in Portugal, though Angola flavours the whole book.

Coming next: Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Malaysia and Mozambique.

The best known books set in each country: Morocco

Posted on 2 March 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. I am excluding books of which less than 50%, as far as I can tell, is actually set in Morocco. (It doesn’t help that Morocco is illegally occupying the country immediately to its south.)

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
The Sheltering Sky	Paul Bowles	29,499	4,508
The Time in Between	María Dueñas	47,894	1,992
Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail	Malika Oufkir	24,265	2,103
Destination Unknown	Agatha Christie	16,297	2,394
Tangerine	Christine Mangan	33,388	935
Who Is Maud Dixon?	Alexandra Andrews	39,137	651
Garment of Shadows	Laurie R. King	10,259	1,039
This Blinding Absence of Light	Tahar Ben Jelloun	13,106	569

It’s interesting that the only two books on the list by Moroccan writers (Stolen Lives and This Blinding Absence of Light) are about being imprisoned in the same jail at the same time, though one is autobiography and the other fiction.

There are several of these that I’m not completely certain about, either because (eg The Sheltering Sky) it’s not 100% clear that the North African setting is Morocco, or because (eg The Time In Between) it’s not 100% clear to me that the Moroccan setting amounts to more than half of the book, but in those cases and a couple of others, I gave the one on the list the benefit of the doubt.

I excluded the top four books which came up in my calculations, and another two lower down. Top was Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, where it’s not clear that the desert setting is in Morocco; then Less by Andrew Sean Greer, which is about a man who goes around the world and visits Morocco; then Chanson Douce / The Perfect Nanny / Lullaby, by Leïla Slimani, set in Paris; then King of the Wind: The Story of the Godolphin Arabian, by Marguerite Henry, which is about a horse that actually (as far as I can see) spends most of its life outside Morocco.

The other two books that I disqualified ranked between Who Is Maud Dixon? and Garment of Shadows, both by Leïla Lamani (as opposed to Laila Slimani): The Other Americans and The Moor’s Account, both of which are set in the Americas.

Coming next: Angola, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Malaysia.

The best known books set in each country: Poland

Posted on 23 February 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. I am excluding books of which less than 50% is actually set in today’s Poland. This is a case where you would think that only one thing had ever happened in the country’s history…

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
Night	Elie Wiesel	1,301,250	28,893
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas	John Boyne	893,261	15,839
The Tattooist of Auschwitz	Heather Morris	1,063,084	7,136
Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History	Art Spiegelman	352,319	11,169
The Complete Maus	Art Spiegelman	236,184	9,215
Schindler’s List	Thomas Keneally	162,837	8,261
Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began	Art Spiegelman	153,093	7,736
Salt to the Sea	Ruta Sepetys	232,282	3,802

Art Spiegelman (deservedly) does well here, if not quite as dominant as Marjane Satrapi was for Iran. But it’s clear that the winning place goes to Elie Wiesel’s Night. All eight of these books are about Nazi Germany and the Second World War, and seven of them are about the Holocaust.

I wasn’t quite sure about Salt to the Sea, which centers around the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, but apparently the characters spend a lot of the book getting to and then hanging around in what is now Gdynia (then Gotenhafen), so I’m allowing it on the list.

I disqualified several books which have Polish authors, and so are tagged “Poland” by LT and GR users, but are not actually set in Poland. These were Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, in which the words “Poland” and “Polish” do not even appear; The Last Wish and Blood of Elves from the Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski, which may have roots in Slavic mythology but are clearly set in a fantasy world; Lilac Girls, by Martha Hall Kelly, which seems to be more set in Germany than anywhere else; and The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss, which is mainly set in the USA.

Well, that was grim. Next up, Morocco, then Angola and Ukraine.

The best known books set in each country: Canada

Posted on 9 February 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. I am excluding books of which less than 50% is actually set in Canada, as explained further below. This is a case where the winner is way ahead of the field, and also where the winner is really not in the least surprising.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
Anne of Green Gables	L.M. Montgomery	1,043,519	31,851
Hatchet	Gary Paulsen	421,242	18,861
Station Eleven	Emily St. John Mandel	563,790	12,703
Anne of Avonlea	L.M. Montgomery	211,412	13,333
The Blind Assassin	Margaret Atwood	159,389	16,932
Anne of the Island	L.M. Montgomery	183,090	11,460
The Shipping News	E. Annie Proulx	148,866	13,786
Still Life	Louise Penny	266,070	7,059

L.M. Montgomery does pretty well here. I was looking back to see if we have had any other countries so far with seven out of eight books by women writers, and to my surprise the answer is yes, there have been four of the previous 38: South Korea, Kenya, the United Kingdom and Iran. Which might not be the four you would have guessed.

The top two books tagged “Canada” by LT and GR users by score were The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, and Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, neither of which is set in Canada at all as far as I remember. The setting of Room, by Emma Donoghue, is not specified geographically as far as I can tell, and I thought quite carefully about whether to qualify it or not; but it’s based on events in Austria, and although the film was made in Canada, it is explicitly set in Ohio. On the other hand, my memory of Station Eleven is that most of it is set on what is now the Canadian side of the lakes, so I let it through.

Two more Margaret Atwood novels, Oryx and Crake and The Testaments, are set or mostly set in what is currently the United States, but who knows where we may be in a few weeks’ time? That still leaves her The Blind Assassin, which is explicitly set in Ontario. Alias Grace missed the cut by a hair’s breadth.

Next up: Poland, then Morocco, Angola and Ukraine. But I’m going to skip next week as I’ll be at Gallifrey One.

The best known books set in each country: Yemen

Posted on 2 February 2025 by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. I am excluding books of which less than 50% is actually set in Yemen, as explained further below.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced	Nujood Ali	23,627	1,231
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen	Paul Torday	16,461	1,631
The Panther	Nelson DeMille	23,158	1,125
The Monk of Mokha	Dave Eggers	20,958	754
Sold	Zana Muhsen	7,759	464
Henna House	Nomi Eve	4,266	215
Motoring with Mohammed	Eric Hansen	1,611	343
The Woman Who Fell from the Sky	Jennifer Steil	1,432	153

Yemen has not been well served in the literature available in the West. Two of the above are about child slavery and sexual abuse (I Am Nujood and Sold) and the rest are all by foreigners (Jennifer Steil’s memoir of teaching journalism sounds particularly dire).

I excluded a lot of books which cover Yemen along with other places. Three of these were fiction: Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese (mainly set in Ethiopia), The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty, which is set all over the Indian Ocean (but with Oman rather than Yemen as the heroine’s home base), and Black Mamba Boy, by Nadifa Mohamed, which starts in Yemen but is mostly set in East Africa.

The rest were non-fiction; War on Terror punditry (The Looming Tower, by Lawrence Wright; Dirty Wars, by Jeremy Scahill), regional travelogues (Arabian Sands, by Wilfred Thesiger; Baghdad Without a Map, by Tony Horwitz), and general reporting (Our Women on the Ground, ed. Zahra Hankir). I am also sad to have to disqualify Arabia Felix: The Danish Expedition of 1761-1767, by Thorkild Hansen, which looks fascinating, but only 90 pages out of 370 are actually set in Yemen.

One case of huge divergence between Goodreads and LibraryThing: The Handsome Jew, by Yemeni writer Ali al-Muqri, has 2,955 raters on GR, but only 8 owners on LibraryThing, which clearly has failed to penetrate the Yemeni market. The more traditional travel books score comparatively better on LT.

Next up: Canada. This will not be at all surprising.

From the Heart of Europe

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Tag Archives: top books in each country

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