Yesterday I was struck by how much smaller the world has become. My daughter and son-in-law have recently moved to Abu Dhabi, yet there she was to chat with through Live Messenger. In the morning I had already had a chat session with members of another online reading group and there were people from US, Canada, Germany and Australia. Over 30 years has passed since I trekked from Kathmandhu to London on an overland bus, making many good friends. Recently one of them and I have re-discovered each other through FaceBook.
But nowhere is the shrinking of the world so clearly illustrated as in the choice of international authors, particularly in the crime and mystery fiction genre, now available to us in translated paperbacks.
Apart from a constant diet of Australian, British, Canadian and American authors, last year I read books by
Guillermo Martinez
Henning Mankell
Natsuo Kirino
Arnaldur Indridason
Helene Tursten
Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
Karin Fossum
Gianrico Carofiglio
and the list of new books by non-English authors grows annually as publishers discover best-sellers and prize winners in other languages.
No comments:
Post a Comment