See here for methodology.
Title | Author | Goodreads raters | LibraryThing owners |
Cutting for Stone | Abraham Verghese | 393,433 | 9,625 |
The Shadow of the Sun | Ryszard Kapuściński | 15,178 | 2,099 |
I may have to change my approach from here on. Up until now, I have been listing the top 8 books in each country which are tagged with that country’s name on Goodreads or LibraryThing. But it seems that the users of online catalogues don’t always check which book is set in which country. Brideshead Revisited is set in England. What is the What is about South Sudan. Infidel is about Somalia. A Long Walk to Water is also about South Sudan. The Covenant of Water is set in India. And Say You’re One of Them is a short story collection of which only one story is set in Ethiopia. So I think for future posts in this series I will not record disqualified books in the main table, but will note them in the commentary.
The two survivors are worthy. Cutting for Stone‘s protagonists identify as Indian, but spend most of their lives in Ethiopia. And The Shadow of the Sun is classic journalism.
The top book by an Ethiopian author set in Ethiopia is The Shadow King, by Maaza Mengiste.
Next up: Egypt. (And I should really have done Ethiopia a few weeks back – it has a larger population than Japan or the Philippines.)
India | China | USA | Indonesia | Pakistan | Nigeria | Brazil (revisited) | Bangladesh (revisited) | Russia | Mexico | Japan | Philippines (revisited) | Ethiopia (revisited) | Egypt | DR Congo | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Germany | France | Thailand | UK | Tanzania | South Africa | Italy | Myanmar | Kenya | Colombia | South Korea | Sudan | Uganda | Spain | Algeria | Iraq | Argentina | Afghanistan