World Lit Wednesday: MISS CHOPSTICKS by Xinran

ISBN: 978071180416 [UK]

Continent: Asia

Country: China

Title: Miss Chopsticks

Author: Xue Xinran

Translator: Esther Tyldesley

"Three was absolutely determined that this would not happen to her. After all, hadn't her father 'taken' her mother—and look what had become of her. It was as if he had gone out and brought back a tool to have children, make clothes, cook, do the housework, raise the pigs, feed the dogs, and endure injustice and hardship. If wanting a man meant that kind of life, Three would gladly do without one" (page 167).

In the rural Chinese village where Three grows up, women are referred to as "chopsticks"—ultilitarian, easily breakable things—while men are the strong "roofbeams" that hold up a house. Three's parents have six daughters and no sons, a situation that has brought ridicule on their family from the other villagers. The sisters are worth so little that their names are only numbers corresponding to the order in which they were born.

With her eldest sister already married off, and Two dead—having committed suicide rather than suffer the same fate—Three is desperate for a way out. When a sympathetic uncle helps her run away to the nearest large city, Nanjing, Three is determined to show her father that even a chopstick can support a house.

World Lit Wednesday: BY NIGHT IN CHILE by Roberto Bolaño

ISBN: 9780099459392 [UK]

Continent: South America

Country: Chile

Title: By Night in Chile

Author: Roberto Bolaño

First published in: 2000

"...[H]e said: Pablo's going to win the Nobel Prize. And he said it as if he were sobbing in the middle of an ashen field. And he said: America is going to change. And he said: Chile is going to change. And then his jawbone hung out of joint, but still he said: I won't live to see it" (p. 50).

My first South American novel for the Global Reading Challenge is By Night in Chile by Chilean author Roberto Bolaño. Taking place over the course of one night, the novel follows the wandering thoughts of Father Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix, a priest and literary critic who is approaching the end of his life.

World Lit Wednesday: THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins

ISBN: 9781407109084 [UK]

Continent: North America in the post-apocalyptic dystopian future

Country: Panem

Title: The Hunger Games

Author: Suzanne Collins

"I can't go down without a fight. Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to...to show the Capitol they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games" (Peeta, page 172).

The idea of the Global Reading Challenge is to read books from every continent, but since there aren't many books to come out of the frozen wastelands of Antarctica, for the "seventh continent" you get to choose your own genre: historical, sci fi, nautical, fantasy, or whatever. I've chosen alternate realities, which is what brought me to Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games. And wow, I'm glad it did.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen is from District 12, the poorest of Panem's districts, located in what was once Appalachia. Life is tough, and it's only Katniss's illegal hunting that keeps her little family from starvation. But things get even tougher when Katniss ends up as a tribute in the Hunger Games, the annual televised competition in which twenty-four kids--a boy and a girl from each district--fight to the death. There can only be one winner. 

World Lit Wednesday: SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS by Arthur Ransome

ISBN: 9780099503910 [UK]

Continent: Europe

Country: United Kingdom

Title: Swallows and Amazons

Author: Arthur Ransome

First published in: 1930

Swallows and Amazons is a classic British children's novel, one that I hadn't heard of before I moved to the UK. The first time I heard about the novel was when I was working in a book shop over the holiday season a couple of years ago. A customer asked where he could find the book, and proceeded to give me a very funny look indeed when he realized I hadn't heard if it (almost as funny as the look I got when I told another customer that I didn't know what a "Filofax" was--FYI, it's a type of personal organizer).

Swallows and Amazons takes place in Britain's Lake District in August 1929, and follows the adventures of a group of children who are staying at a cottage beside a lake during their summer vacation. The four siblings--John, Susan, Titty, and Roger--are allowed to sail their little boat, the Swallow, to a deserted island where they camp, sail, and have adventures. Their island life is every kid's dream: they sleep in tents, cook over a fire, and go swimming and exploring every day. In the course of their adventures, they meet the curmudgeonly Captain Flint, who lives on a houseboat, and his two nieces, Nancy and Peggy, fierce pirates who sail about causing mischief in their boat, the Amazon.

World Lit Wednesday: THE WHALE RIDER by Witi Ihimaera

ISBN: 9780790009315 [UK]

Continent: Australasia

Country: New Zealand

Title: The Whale Rider

Author: Witi Ihimaera

"Kahu looked at Koro Apirana, her eyes shining. 'Oh, Paka, can't you hear them? I've been listening to them for ages now. Oh, Paka, and the whales are still singing,' she said" (Page 150).

Eight-year-old Kahutia Te Rangi loves her great-grandfather, Koro Apirana, dearly. Koro Apirana, however, has no time for her. As chief of their Maori tribe, he is busy trying to recruit the next tribal leader from among the community's young boys. And besides, he hates the fact that his first great-grandchild was born a girl, and that her parents named her after the tribe's legendary hero, Paikea, the Whale Rider.

World Lit Wednesday: FROM A CROOKED RIB by Nuruddin Farah

ISBN: 9780141187174 [UK]

Continent: Africa

Country: Somalia

Title: From a Crooked Rib

Author: Naruddin Farah

First published in: 1970

"God created Woman from a crooked rib; and any one who trieth to staighten it, breaketh it." (Somali traditional proverb, quoted from Part One)

For my third African novel I chose Naruddin Farah's From a Crooked Rib, the story of a teenage Somali girl, Ebla, who flees from her nomadic tribe in the country to find a new life in Mogadishu. Upset when her grandfather decides to marry her off to an older man, Ebla decides that running away is her only option.