a Book Haul in 15 Countries 🌎 classics & literature from around the world

hi welcome back to my channel it's emma i hope you're doing fantastically well like the title of this video says this is going to be a book haul from 15 different countries all over the world and i'm really really excited to get into them i bet you're all so excited i also hope you're well rested for this video but if not please let me take a couple minutes to thank the sponsor of today's video helix sleep so what is helix sleep if you've never heard of them they are a premium mattress in a box company that specializes in creating mattresses designed to fit your unique sleep preferences your style ordering a helix sleep mattress is super easy because you just go online fill out the helix sleep quiz which outlines your preferred bed size your sleep position your mattress firmness and many more personalized preferences you can choose from so based on my results helix did match me with their midnight luxe mattress it personalized based on the fact that i am a back and a side sleeper i actually sleep with my arms just straight above my head like this like i kid you not on the scale they also paired me with the medium firmness which is nice because i don't like it too soft i don't like it too hard i like it just right if you have been following my apartment problems or apparently like the seven plagues of the apartment you'll know that i've been out of a bed for a very long time and also out of a whole bedroom but that's a whole other story so getting this helix mattress and like sleeping on it for the first time i think my spinal cord like cried out in happiness tears were just falling down all of my spinal columns tears of happiness the midnight lux mattress just offers me so much more support than i was previously getting definitely gives me way more support than any university counseling session i've ever been to so for mattress size i got the queen which is really nice because i've never had a queen bed and so finally my mattress size matches my occupation if you 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you so much to helix for making today's video possible for you guys so let's get into this big stack of books that i'm balancing on my legs and let's get into it so like i said we have 15 countries i'm gonna do a lot of these videos my goal is of course to show you guys and read for myself a book from every single country that's something i've been doing a little bit this year i've kind of made 2021 the year that i want to start that goal even though of course in the past i've already read books from numerous countries as we do but um i started from fresh in 2021 and so this book haul is gonna go towards that goal of reading a book from every single country so i tried to space these out kind of all over the globe and of course by the end of this video please please please i would love you guys to comment which countries you would love to see in the next video so that the next one can be kind of catered to your request so and i also want to say a huge thank you because a lot of these were from you guys recommendations as well so i will try to if i remember i will try to shout you out and say thank you so much for giving me these recommendations so let's just get started first up kenya we have devil on the cross by ngugi watiango this one is going to be so good this one was recommended by a bunch of you guys so thank you so so so so much i cannot wait to read this i was actually going through a lot of engi watiango's just like list because he has a lot a lot of books he is a kenyan writer and devil on the cross first of all just the way that it was written really pulled me in because this book was actually written in secret while he was imprisoned and it was written in secret on toilet paper that's how it first came about which was just yeah and more than that we are following a woman in devil on the cross and she moves from her kind of rural village in kenya and she comes to the capital nairobi to find work and she does and she's happy about it but almost as soon as she starts she realizes that she is dealing with a super corrupt businessman so ultimately devil on the cross becomes about how western capitalist ideas are now overrun in kenya and seeing how this really really affects everyday people like the woman we're following in this book we watch her as she gets exploited time and time again by her boss and i believe she eventually comes to realize that her problems are only symptoms of a larger societal malaise i think this is just going to be incredible incredible can i read you guys the first sentence of them i never know do you guys like that or do you not like that because i think it's super super interesting it begins certain people in ilmorog told me that this story was too disgraceful too shameful that it should be concealed in the depths of everlasting darkness i know he has so many so many good books i almost got so many other ones and i can't wait to read more this is definitely going to be my first book from kenya though that i read which i'm so excited about so that is devil on the cross all right next up we have south korea some south korean literature we have untold night and day by beiswa i've been meaning to read this book for over a year now it's like been on my list for a year now so this is just an absolutely gorgeous cover gorgeous gorgeous cover as well i got this one off book depository so i think this one might be the uk cover yeah i just love like the shimmering kind of holographic silver there so so so cool so this one really captured my eye because it sounded so strange this tale unfolds over i think one day and one night it's summer it's extremely hot we're set in seoul and we're following our protagonist named kim ayami and she has just finished working on the night that this book begins at seoul's only audio theater for the blind so she closes up her shop and then she immediately heads out with her boss because they are searching for their missing friend so this kind of searching for their missing friend takes them on this super strange i've heard it compared to like kind of a fever dream adventure through the streets of seoul and stuff like that she encounters a visiting poet a man who is not as he seems and the world order gives way to chaos and the edges of reality start to fray this one is very much i think about the past kind of burbling and bubbling and gushing up into the present and like how much of reality is affected by that and stuff which is so interesting and yeah very very excited to read untold night and day so this is the one i would love to read this year hopefully for south korea so this one was translated from the korean by deborah smith and the first chapter begins the former actress ayami was sitting on the second flight of stairs in the audio theater with the guest book in her hand alright so we're now going to take our flight from south korea to norway and this is also a book i've been meaning to read for a long time i finally bought it for myself which is amazing it's also a gorgeous gorgeous cover it is the ice palace by taria vesos this is oh it's gonna be so good this seems like it's gonna be the shortest little punch packing book it's gonna freeze my cold frozen hearts and it's just gonna be amazing so this one we are set in a kind of isolated norwegian fjords and we're following two friends two girls who have quite recently developed quite an intense friendship and their names are un and cease sis cease the school children call it the ice palace a frozen waterfall transformed into a fantastic structure of translucent walls sparkling towers and secret chambers so these two girls go exploring into this frozen waterfall and unfortunately one of them gets lost and doesn't come back so now the other girl is coping with her disappearance and very much descending into the icy world of grief and of her own kind of frozen wasteland very much as her friend went missing into like this frozen waterfall so i've heard tiny vasel's writing is just so incredibly blunt subtle to the point but also so so tragic and compelling this one is translated by elizabeth rockin and it begins chapter one a young white forehead boring through the darkness an 11 year old girl so that is some norwegian literature we've got the ice palace next we have a book that everyone has been screaming at me and things that i will love and i think so too because this came in the mail it's an also really really gorgeous edition and i just started like flicking through it and it was just so gorgeous like very much um fragmented little pieces of poetry and prose and just sparkling beauty so our contender for portuguese literature in this haul is going to be the book of disquiet by fernando pessoa so excited if you can see this is such a stunning copy i think this is the serpent's tail edition and it has like little flecks of gold and sparkle in the cover oh my goodness so poison never completed his book of disquiet he actually like didn't want to complete it um i think he called it like an act of cowardice to finish writing this book but essentially these are kind of diary entries celebrating lisbon i think mostly in the 1930s um and we have pessoa kind of taking on the guise of this diary writer of various diary writers in here um people who are writing journals about what's going on in the streets of lisbon and just like celebrating life there in this time period in this location so it was first published altogether in 1982 after it was like painstakingly melded together um from these little pieces of things that he would write and write and leave in a box so all these manuscripts were eventually pieced into the book of disquiet this one begins installed on the upper floors of certain respectable taverns in lisbon can be found a small number of restaurants or eating places which have the solid homely look of one of those restaurants you see in towns that lack even a train station when you flip through this book it's just like little pieces and various like puzzle pieces that fit into this whole book of impressions it's like very much a huge modernist text and just everyone screams about this all the time so so excited um so portugal here we are thank you all right next up we have nigeria and we have things fall apart by chinese um i have heard so so much about this i've read the second coming by wb yates which is where this book gets its title from things fall apart the center cannot hold i remember studying that in uni and then i have heard of this because it's uber uber famous but i haven't really known what it's about so chinese wrote things fall apart about this warrior named okonkwo and he is gathering so much fame because he's the best fighter he's the best warrior things are going great for him but then he accidentally kills one of his clansmen and he is exiled and things begin to fall apart so he goes into exile after accidentally killing someone he wasn't supposed to and when he comes back from exile he discovers that things are so different because during the time that he was gone all of these missionaries and colonial governors have arrived in his village invaded it installed themselves and are now there as these like parasitic fixtures so he is back and his whole world where he's from his relationship with everyone he knows is just completely different and changed the back says it's an arresting parable of a proud but powerless man witnessing the ruin of his people and recently i found out i didn't really know that this was a trilogy right because it continues an arrow of god and no longer at ease so the first chapter begins okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond and this is the uh penguin modern classics edition and so was the ice palace if you guys are wondering so that is nigeria alright this book i am currently reading i'm a little bit more than halfway through and it's going to be like five stars it's gonna be five stars it's gonna be one of my favorite reads of the year and probably of all time and that is frankenstein in baghdad by almond tadawi wow wow um if you can see the insane dog earring that has been happening here um i wasn't sure if i wanted to tab this or not because it was like my first read-through of this i wasn't really sure what to expect but i really should have agreed to try tapping it because now like almost every page is dog-eared so frankenstein in baghdad is a retelling of mary shelley's frankenstein and when you put shelley's frankenstein in the context of like 2005 baghdad the power that this story takes on and like it's just blowing me away it's just blowing me away as you can imagine this book is just so brilliant i'm gonna try to tell you a little bit more than the synopsis on the back but also a little bit less because i think if you go into frankenstein and baghdad there's like a bit that i wouldn't want to know and like it's just one of those books that you have to kind of go into um one of the first things as well i want to say is that this is translated by jonathan wright i don't think it's the best translation in the world honestly a lot of it feels awkward and stilted it kind of feels like frankenstein's monster's body feels like it feels like a jumble of parts that are clunky and aren't really working together smoothly so i don't know if there's any other translations i imagine not but i would love to know if there is because i don't think it's the best translation in the world so i'm really trying to ignore that and focus on the story which is just so compelling i cannot seem to put this down it's just incredible so like i said we are following a variety of people who are living in baghdad the story opens with this elderly woman named elisha and she is waiting and waiting and waiting for her son daniel to come back because he was taken away to fight her daughters have all moved out of iraq and she's all alone waiting for her son daniel to return even though everyone around her just assumes soon to be dead also living in the kind of broken down second floor attachment to elisha's house is this man named hadi and hadi is essentially our victor in frankenstein in baghdad what he's doing is going around after attacks um explosions anything that is racking the city of baghdad and killing these innocent people and he is taking body parts from these people and he is stitching them as you can imagine into one person and his goal is for these people who have been killed in the city to be recognized as people um and to be given a proper burial and for the government to see what is going on to these innocent people we also follow a reporter we have a hotel manager we have just a whole cast of characters it is just brilliant like the ideas in this book um and what amit sadawi does with like frankenstein i might be enjoying my time in this one even more than mary shelley's version which is brilliant but like this is just blowing my mind it's just incredible so hard hitting it's like it's just affecting me so much and i wasn't i just didn't know what to expect going into this book but it is just incredible incredible incredible incredible so that is rock wow let's go to japan we have confessions of a mask by yukio mishima um at this time at this time i have a lot of mishima on my shelves have not read any of him i know um this one was a gift from a subscriber so thank you so much michael i don't know where guys where do i start with him i have the sailor who fell from grace with the sea i have thirst for love and i have confessions of a mask confessions of a mask is another kind of modern japanese classic in this one we have a man who is really struggling because mishima's protagonist and this one discovers that he is becoming a homosexual in a polite post-war japan and to survive he kind of adopts this mask of propriety i believe this is a tragedy i don't know anything about mishama's writing i know a little bit about his life but i just don't know which one i should start with because i know he's so many incredible novels that everyone loves and adores so yeah this one is translated by meredith weatherby from japanese and chapter one begins for many years i claimed i could remember things seen at the time of my own birth yeah but that is confessions of a mask from japan all right we will now be embarking on a very long flight from japan to italy we have if on a winter's night a traveler by italo cavino so many of you all told me to read this book um as well i think this is one that i'm really going to enjoy because this one does some crazy weird wacky things this book begins by letting you know that you are reading if on a winter's night traveler the book you're holding in your hands by italo carbino and it just takes this very like it just takes the fourth wall it will astound you but this is not one novel this is in fact ten contained in these two covers they each have a different plot a different style ambience and author and each is interrupted at a moment of suspense so like they're cut off and then they slide into the next one so i love post-modernism together they form a labyrinth of literatures known and unknown alive and extinct through which two readers a male and a female pursue both the storylines that intrigue them in one another this one's translated from the italian by william weaver and this one does begin you are about to begin reading italo calvino's new novel if on a winter's night a traveler so um yeah i just think this is going to be crazy i would love to read more i know if on a winter snake a traveler is his most famous but yeah um i'm like scared but i'm also just so excited about this one so there we go so we're gonna make a pit stop in mexico and we have hurricane season by fernando medcor i'm so excited i first heard this one over from tanya at bookishtopics because she was talking about it and this was shortlisted actually uh quite recently for the 2020 international booker prize which is so exciting and then this was actually given to me as a gift from a subscriber so thank you so much raoul um i cannot wait to read this this one sounds absolutely horrifying we are set in a small village and there is a witch except now the witch is dead the people there discover her corpse and now everyone is investigating like what's going on how did she die why is the witch dead one of the other things i know about this book is that it's just like unreliable narrator city i love it i love love love unreliable narrators so so much i think it's so fascinating and so like this one we have a whole host of them as they try to take over this narrative and tell you their own point of view and try to make you as the reader i think convinced of what they think happened to the witch and what's going on in this village and stuff like that which is just gonna be crazy and probably just like so mind-messing this one is compared on the back to uh bolanos 2666 or william faulkner's novels it says it takes place in a world saturated with myths and violence real violence the kind that seeps into the soil poisoning everything around it the world that becomes more and more terrifying the deeper you explore it so ah i'm so excited this one's translated from spanish by sophie hughes thank you so much sophie hughes i'm so excited this one also begins with a quote from yates which is really cool because so did things fall apart chapter one begins they reach the canal along the track leading up from the river their slingshots drawn for battle and their eyes squinting almost stitched together in the midday glare so that is mexico i'm so excited for that one oh my gosh all right next up we have denmark some danish literature we have one of us is sleeping by josephine klugartz this was also sent to me so thank you so so so much i had never heard of this one before but i like took a little sneak peek at the back and i saw ann carson's name and i freaked out and i was like well i will love this this is a novel about loss and grief because i believe we have a mother who is dealing with cancer and then we have the daughter who returns home to take care of her mom to look after her but during the same time she gets into the super intense love affair so i think that's mostly what one of us is sleeping about is her recounting to us like this love affair what happened what went down the details of it and stuff like that as well as the grief and disillusionment that follows its end the book striking imagery and magnificent prose underpin its principle theme the jarring contrast between the recollection of stability your parents child at home your love and all of the endings that we go through in our lives everything that comes to an end when previously there was no end it was stability we had it and then we grow up and it's gone um so i think this is going to be just so crushing it says it works in the same way as ann carson this one's translated from the danish by martin eitkin and it begins the light comes creeping in over the plowed fields so this is also a really beautiful copy i think this is the open letter edition look at this and this one is also part of the danish women writer series which is super super cool so i should definitely check out um the rest of them because this is just gorgeous and then the little blurb one this one says scandinavia now has its own virginia wolf so that's also exciting all right next we have colombia and we have a love and other stories by gabrielle garcia marquez this one is translated by edith grossman and i'm so so looking forward to this one um if you don't know i don't think you can see it but 100 years of solitude is the best book i've ever read wow go do yourself a favor and read that book and i cannot wait to get to the rest of marquez's work because yeah of course why would i not this is also a really gorgeous addition look at this and then the back has like her hair on it wow this one is a novel i think a lot of marquez's novels like love in the time of cholera i have like a slight idea of what they're about but i don't really want to know because i went into 100 years completely blind like the title gave me an idea of what it was about and then i was completely wrong and i love that so i think that's what i want to do with um of love and other demons um all i know is that it is the story of a doomed love affair between an unruly copper-haired girl and the bookish priest sent to oversee her exorcism i love it i love it i love it already chapter one begins an ash gray dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst onto the rough terrain of the market on the first sunday in december knock down tables of fried food overturned indian stalls and loitery kiosks and bit four people who happen to cross its path that's of love another demon next up we have sudan and we have seasons of migration to the north there's so much hair in my mouth this was also recommended to me by you guys so thank you so so much um this says on the back that it is an arabian night in reverse this one is about a young man who returns to his village again after some time away i always love like these like coming back to things and they're like so different because that's what so many of these books are about as well but um he spent many years studying in europe he comes back to sudan and he finds that things are different among these things that are different there is a stranger who he's never seen before and the stranger's name is mustafa saeed they become friends they become like really close friends and as mustafa starts to tell our protagonist about his life he tells him about his life during i think world war no world war one um in his life in london that he was lionized by society and desired by woman as an exotic novelty mustafa was driven to take brutal revenge on the decadent west and was in turn destroyed by it so um i think this is just gonna be incredible um i haven't heard too many i haven't heard anyone really talk about this at all but the cover as well is very intriguing and this is again the modern classic edition but um this just sounds also so so good this one is translated by dennis johnson davies and it begins it was gentlemen after a long absence seven years to be exact during which time i was studying in europe that i returned to my people so i also love this one because it has like really nice big print which is good for me and my eyeballs so that is season of migration to the north we have three more countries to go to where shall we travel first let's take a really nice flight to sweden we have calo kane by karen boya um this is actually a gift thank you so much again um i've heard so much about karen boya at this point i know this one is quite famous definitely in the same vein as like fahrenheit 451 brave new worlds all those dystopia because calo king is about um this society and it's very much dystopian she wrote this after witnessing at the beginning or almost beginning i think of world war ii when she was in germany what was going on there which prompted her to write this which is just going to be insane um so yeah it's written midway between brave new world and 1984. we have this totalitarian state again called the world state which seeks to just entirely crush and annihilate the individual in this desolate paranoid landscape of police eyes and police ears the obedient citizen and middle-ranking scientist leo cal discovers a drug that will force anyone who takes it to tell the truth and i believe calocaine is that drug yeah this is just gonna be like insane as well this is a really cool cover i believe this was the last novel she wrote as well because i think maybe shortly after writing it she overdosed and passed away so i think this is just gonna be so much this is translated from swedish by david mcduff and oh it opens with a quote from the wasteland by t.s eliot the awful daring of a moment's surrender by this and this only we have existed chapter one begins the book i now sit down to write will inevitably appear pointless to many if indeed i dare suppose that many will ever have a chance to read it since quite on my own initiative without anyone's orders i am beginning a task of this kind and yet and myself not really clear about its purpose so ah yeah all right i had to include uh one from canada in here of course i did this one the governor general's literary award i actually found this in a little community book box if you haven't seen my little library video highly recommend i just had so much fun with that this is the break by katarina vermette this is a story about indigenous woman written by an indigenous woman break is about a woman named stella and she is a young metis mother who looks out her window one evening and sees someone in trouble on the break so the break in this book which is the title is this kind of like isolated strip of land that's outside her house it's just kind of super desolate a wasteland and so she calls the police and says that there's something going on there might be a crime uh occurring here oh similar to hurricane season this book also takes the perspectives and tells the reader from the different narratives and perspectives and views and minds of the people in this town what happened with this crime we have police family and friends who tell their personal stories leading up to the fateful night we have lou a social worker we have cheryl who is an artist paulina a single mother phoenix a homeless teenager and officer scott who is a metis policeman um and this is also a family saga um which i'm so excited about i'm really excited to see how that part of it kind of weaves in and it's also just such a gorgeous cover as well this one starts with the break is a piece of land just west of mcphillip street i honestly don't really um that often get a chance to read books that are set um in canada so this will be super interesting as well and i cannot wait to read them that is the break finally the last book we have here is from china so we have some chinese literature and this is ball lightning by cece this is blurbed by barack obama on the front so that's cool this cover is absolutely insane what is going on here um already this year actually i read the three body problem by this author as well which was incredible so good um but ball lightning is a different novel altogether but definitely dealing with the same kind of topics of physics and ethics and philosophy and politics and stuff like that which is super interesting so when chen's parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning he devotes his life to cracking the secret of this mysterious natural phenomenon he starts to travel kind of all over he goes to these places i think eventually he even ends up at like an old soviet science station researching ball lightning and on this trip to kind of discover more about this phenomenon and stuff like that he does encounter different people some people who want to help him some people who want to hinder him and stuff like that i think it's gonna be such an interesting discussion i've mentioned i think so many times that i love when science kind of takes this place in literature and then we use these like scientific principles and concepts to discuss um literary things and life and humanity and stuff like that so that is the last one thank you guys so much for watching i hope you enjoyed this tour i hope you're well rested after the many flights that you took um today all over the world look at you go we traveled economy you didn't have to pay a penny um and i know i would definitely be resting um tonight really really nicely after these flights on my helix mattress and once again thank you so so much for sponsoring this video letting me talk about these beautiful books from all over the world and once again there is a link in the description box if you are interested in sleeping on a bed which i believe we probably all are so thank you guys so much for watching and please once again a quick reminder to leave in the comments any countries you'd like to see in the next video your thoughts on any of these books any recommendations from these countries i've mentioned like i just i just love it i just love it when you guys do that so yeah i don't know which one i'm gonna definitely gonna finish frankenstein and baghdad first because this is just going incredible incredibly but i don't know which one to start next so all right i think that's it for me today thank you so much for watching i hope you're doing wonderfully and i will see you so so so soon in the next video ciao you

Channel: * e m m i e *

Views: 46,248

Rating: 4.9765396 out of 5

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Id: HUBLcfiRcJo

Length: 31min 33sec (1893 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 07 2021