British writer Ann Morgan set herself a challenge — to read a book from every country in the world in one year. She describes the experience and what she learned.

    I used to think of myself as a fairly cosmopolitan sort of person, but my bookshelves told a different story. Apart from a few Indian novels and the odd Australian and South African book, my literature collection consisted of British and American titles. I hardly ever tackled anything in translation. My reading was confined to stories by English-speaking authors.

    So, at the start of 2012, I set myself the challenge of trying to read a book from 196 countries and regions in a year to find out what I was missing.

    With no idea how to go about this, I decided to ask for help. I created a blog called A Year of Reading the World and put out an appeal for suggestions of titles that I could read in English.

    The response was amazing. People all over the world were getting in touch with ideas and offers of help. Some posted me books from their home countries. Others did hours of research on my behalf. Several writers, like Turkmenistan’s Ak Welsapar and Panama’s Juan David Morgan, sent me unpublished translations of their novels.

    Even with such an extraordinary team of bibliophiles behind me, sourcing books was no easy task. For a start, with translations making up only around 4.5 percent of literary works published in Britain and Ireland, getting English versions of stories was tricky.

    This was particularly true for French and Portuguese-speaking African countries. There’s precious little on offer for states such as the Comoros, Madagascar, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique — I had to rely on unpublished manuscripts for several of these. When it came to the tiny island nation of Sao Tome and Principe, a team of volunteers in Europe and America translated a book of short stories by Santomean writer Olinda Beja for me.

   196本书带她看世界 (上)

英国作家安娜·摩根给自己设了一个挑战，一年时间内从世界上每个国家的书籍中选出一本来读。她讲述了这段经历以及她的收获。

我曾经认为自己是一个见多识广的人，但我的书架表明这并非事实。 除了几本印度小说，还有一两本澳大利亚和南非的书之外，我的藏书全是英美文学。我几乎从来没试过阅读译本。我的阅读局限于以英语为母语的作家作品。

所以，2012年伊始，我给自己设定一个挑战，在一年时间里读完来自世界上196个国家和地区的书，看看我过去错过了什么。不知道如何下手，我决定求助。我建了一个名为“一年读遍世界”

的博客，请网友推荐我能够用英语阅读的作品。

我收到了意想不到的回应。世界各地读者很快给我提供了各种点子和帮助。有些人给我寄来他们国家的书，有些人花时间帮我做研究。而且，一些作家，像土库曼斯坦的Ak Welsapar、巴拿马的Juan David Morgan还把他们未正式出版的小说译本寄给我。即便有这一群非同寻常的爱书者支持，找书仍非易事。首先，翻译作品只占英国和爱尔兰出版文学作品的4.5%，找到英文译本并不容易。

寻找来自说法语和葡萄牙语的非洲国家的作品时尤为困难。对于类似科摩罗、马达加斯加、几内亚比绍、莫桑比克这些国家，我不得不阅读未发表的手稿。在寻找来自小岛国圣多美和普林西比的作品

时，一群欧洲和美国的志愿者帮我翻译了该国作家Olinda Beja的一本短篇小说集。

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【见多识广的】

jiànduō-shíguǎng de

cosmopolitan

worldly, sophisticated

【爱书的人】

àishū de rén

bibliophile

a lover of books