European Reading Challenge 2013: The Summary

The European Reading Challenge
1 January 2013 to 31 January 2014

Together with the month of January ROSE CITY READER’s European Reading Challenge 2013 is coming to a close at last and it’s time for the summary of my reads. Since joining the challenge past June I ploughed through veritable heaps of books limiting myself to fiction and banning crime and romance from my list of books to read because I don’t like those genres. Some novels and short stories which I picked for the challenge I devoured because they were captivating and intelligent, while I dismissed right away the memory of others because they were boring or I didn’t enjoy them for other reasons. Despite all I’m far from having made my way through every single one of the fifty countries scattered over the European continent. There just wasn’t enough time for so many! 

In addition some countries turned out to be quite a hard nut to crack. The small ones like Andorra, Liechtenstein and San Marino, for instance, haven’t actually brought forth important writers in crowds and they rarely served authors as the setting of a novel. Nonetheless I made out a suitable book for each one of those, but either it was an old novel long out of print like Il trono dei poveri by Marino Moretti dating from 1928 (and reprinted in the 1980s as far as I know) or it was a book on demand like Des bergers andorrans au château de Corbeyran de Foix by Florence Ricard which for mysterious reasons never arrived with me or the story itself couldn’t tempt me at all like in the case of Ludmilla: A Legend of Liechtenstein by Paul Gallico which I know from a German film made of it in the 1950s and which is out of print anyways. 

Eastern Europe (including the three Baltic countries), the Balkans and the Caucasus region too posed a much bigger problem than I had expected because few authors from there seem to have been translated into any of the European languages which I know, or if they were, I couldn’t get hold of their books anywhere around. Moreover, the countries of the former Communist Bloc, which existed more or less tucked away behind the iron curtain for decades, don’t seem to be particularly popular with western writers. In the end I managed to cover at least some of those neglected countries, notably the neighbours of Austria. 

Summing up, I must say that to my great regret there remain many blanks in the following list, but be assured that I’ll go on searching for hidden gems from the disregarded corners of our planet, not just Europe, to read and review them for you. 

My final count of the past 13 months is 65 books set in/from 38 countries and 32 reviews of books set in/from 25 countries. Not bad at all, but see for yourselves... here's my list!

Albania	Broken April by Ismail Kadaré
Andorra
Armenia
Austria	The Christmas Carp by Vicki Baum Young Gerber by Friedrich Torberg (re-read) Chess by Stefan Zweig (re-read) Engel des Vergessens by Maja Haderlap (no English edition found)
Azerbaijan	Ali and Nino by Kurban Said
Belarus
Belgium	The Professor by Charlotte Brontë
Bosnia & Herzegovina	The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
Bulgaria	Apostoloff by Sibylle Lewitscharoff
Croatia	The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna Das Walnusshaus by Miljenko Jergović (original Croatian title: Dvori od oraha; no English edition found)
Cyprus	Small Wars by Sadie Jones
Czech Republic	The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera (re-read)
Denmark
Estonia	Purge by Sofi Oksanen
Finland	Fair Play by Tove Jansson Die Klärung by Hannu Raittila (original Finnish title: Pamisoksen purkaus; no English edition found)
France	The Cat by Colette Christmas Holiday by William Somerset Maugham Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola (re-read)
Georgia	Am Schwarzen Meer by Kéthévane Davrichewy (original French title: La Mer noire; no English edition found)
Germany	Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann (re-read)
Greece	Swell by Ioanna Karystiani
Hungary	Kaddish for an Unborn Child by Imre Kertész Befreiung by Sándor Márai (original Hungarian title: Szabadulás; no English edition found)
Iceland	Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indriðason Der gute Liebhaber by Steinunn Sigurðardóttir (original Icelandic title: Góði Elskhuginn; no English edition found)
Ireland	A World of Love by Elizabeth Bowen The Taoiseach by Peter Cunningham
Italy	Lafcadio's Adventures by André Gide  The Pollen Room by Zoë Jenny Accabadora by Michela Murgia
Kazakhstan	The Zahir by Paulo Coelho (re-read)
Latvia
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta	Sword & Scimitar by Simon Scarrow
Moldova
Monaco	Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman by Stefan Zweig
Montenegro
Netherlands	The Storm by Margriet de Moor
Norway	Victoria by Knut Hamsun Jenny by Sigrid Undset
Poland	The Wedding in Auschwitz by Erich Hackl The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman by Andrzej Szczypiorski
Portugal	Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier The Night in Lisbon by Erich Maria Remarque
Republic of Macedonia
Romania	The Passport by Herta Müller
Russia	The Courilof Affair by Irène Némirovsky The Queen of Spades by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (re-read)
San Marino
Serbia	Ein Sternenzelt aus Stuck by Goran Petrović (original Serbian title: Испод таванице која се љуспа; no English edition found)
Slovakia	A Country Lost, Then Found by Rick Zedník
Slovenia	Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho (re-read)
Spain	Nada by Carmen Laforet The Farewell Angel by Carmen Martín Gaite City of Marvels by Eduardo Mendoza The House of Ulloa by Emilia Pardo Bazán Vida feliz de un joven llamado Esteban by Santiago Gamboa (no English edition found)
Sweden	The Emperor of Portugallia by Selma Lagerlöf
Switzerland	Once a Greek by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Turkey	The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay Snow by Orhan Pamuk
Ukraine	Job: The Story of a Simple Man by Joseph Roth (re-read)
United Kingdom	Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë (re-read) The Sailor from Gibraltar by Marguerite Duras  Memento Mori by Muriel Spark The Art of Leaving by Anna Stothard
Vatican City	Eminence by Morris L. West