114 Books From Around The World I Want To Read Before I Die

This post is an editorial digest by Culture Trip’s Social Media Director, and a repost from Medium.com
I’ve always been an utter bookworm: from my teenage years spent reading the likes of Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment, to university where I studied and devoured French and German literature at Oxford, to ‘real’ adulthood where I find myself drawn to anything that doesn’t smell of airport bestsellers.

I can read like a madwoman, but there is method in the madness. Let me tell you about it: I’ve no time for bad literature, or accidental book choices. Most of the books you’ll see me reading have gone through a meticulous selection process: for years, I’ve been keeping a carefully curated list of all the books I want to read before I die – a lot of it filtered to fascinating, little-known contemporary novels, as opposed to the classics which I’ve already covered. Call me a control freak, but I really care about the quality of my intellectual consumption. And so should you.

Now, I want to share this mini-library with you. It contains all the books on my personal list I haven’t yet read.

A few points to note before you get reading:

1. The vast majority of ‘books to read before you die’ lists are terribly biased towards American and British literature. My list is biased towards the whole world. Around 80% of it is literature in translation. All available in English. Categorized by region, and then alphabetically.

2. This is my Wish List. Books I’ve yet to read, or books I want to re-read. Every time I read one, I’ll mark it as such and add in a date.

3. The list is subjective. I am no book critic. I just pick my reading very carefully.

EUROPE

ASIA & PACIFIC

20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth | Author: Xiaolu Guo | Country of Origin: China

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers | Author: Xiaolu Guo | Country of Origin: China

Arresting God in Kathmandu | Author: Samrat Upadhyay | Country of Origin: Nepal | Read: January 2016

Behind The Beautiful Forevers | Author: Katherine Boo | Country of Origin: India | Read: August 2016

Bombay Stories | Author: Saadat Hasan Manto | Country of Origin: India

Cat Country | Author: Lao She | Country of Origin: China

Censoring an Iranian Love Story | Author: Shahriar Mandanipour | Country of Origin: Iran

The City Son | Author: Samrat Upadhyay | Country of Origin: Nepal | Read: February 2016

Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer | Author: Cyrus Mistry | Country of Origin: India

Colours Of The Mountain | Author: Da Chen | Country of Origin: China

The Corpse Exhibition: And Other Stories of Iraq | Author: Hassan Blasim | Country of Origin: Iraq

The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China From the Bottom Up | Author: Liao Yiwu | Country of Origin: China

The Demon Seed and Other Writings | Author: M.T. Vasudevan Nair | Country of Origin: India

The English Teacher | Author: R.K. Narayan | Country of Origin: India

Goat Days | Author: Benyamin | Country of Origin: India

The God of Small Things | Author: Arundhati Roy | Country of Origin: India

Haroun and the Sea of Stories | Author: Salman Rushdie | Country of Origin: India

I Have the Right to Destroy Myself | Author: Young-Ha Kim | Country of Origin: South Korea

In an Antique Land | Author: Amitav Ghosh | Country of Origin: India

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders | Author: Daniyal Mueenuddin | Country of Origin: Pakistan

Kitchen | Author: Banana Yoshimoto | Country of Origin: Japan. Loved the author’s name.

Life and Death are Wearing Me Out | Author: Mo Yan | Country of Origin: China

Noli Me Tangere | Author: José Rizal | Country of Origin: The Philippines

Please Look After Mother | Author: Kyung-Sook Shin | Country of Origin: South Korea

The Prophet | Author: Kahlil Gibran| Country of Origin: Lebanon

Revenge | Author: Yoko Ogawa | Country of Origin: Japan

Rickshaw Boy | Author: Lao She | Country of Origin: China

Songs of Blood and Sword | Author: Fatima Bhutto | Country of Origin: Afghanistan

The Sound of the Mountain | Author: Yasunari Kawabata | Country of Origin: Japan

The Vivisector | Author: Patrick White | Country of Origin: Australia

The White Tiger | Author: Aravind Adiga | Country of Origin: India/Australia

The Woman in the Dunes | Author: Kōbō Abe | Country of Origin: Japan

Women Without Men | Author: Shahrnush Parsipur | Country of Origin: Iran

AFRICA

A General Theory of Oblivion | Author: José Eduardo Agualusa | Country of Origin: Angola

A Grain of Wheat | Author: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o | Country of Origin: Kenya

Americanah | Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Country of Origin: Nigeria

The Cairo Trilogy | Author: Naguib Mahfouz | Country of Origin: Egypt

The Famished Road | Author: Ben Okri | Country of Origin: Nigeria

The Fishermen | Author: Chigozie Obioma | Country of Origin: Nigeria

July’s People | Author: Nadine Gordimer | Country of Origin: South Africa

Leaving Tangier | Author: Tahar Ben Jelloun | Country of Origin: Morocco

Life & Times of Michael K | Author: J.M. Coetzee | Country of Origin: South Africa

Taxi | Author: Khaled Al Khamissi | Country of Origin: Egypt

This Blinding Absence of Light | Author: Tahar Ben Jelloun | Country of Origin: Morocco

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families | Author: Philip Gourevitch | Set in: Rwanda

Woman at Point Zero | Author: Nawal El-Saadawi | Country of Origin: Egypt

THE AMERICAS

2666 | Author: Roberto Bolaño | Country of Origin: Chile

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius | Author: Dave Eggers | Country of Origin: USA

A Bend in the River | Author: V. S. Naipaul | Country of Origin: Trinidad & Tobago | Read: September 2016

The Chosen | Author: Chaim Potok | Country of Origin: USA

Dirty Havana | Author: Pedro Juan Gutiérrez | Country of Origin: Cuba

Dune | Author: Frank Herbert | Country of Origin: USA

The Feast of the Goat | Author: Mario Vargas Llosa | Country of Origin: Peru

Giovanni’s Room | Author: James Baldwin | Country of Origin: USA

In Cold Blood | Author: Truman Capote | Country of Origin: USA

The Labyrinth of Solitude | Author: Octavio Paz| Country of Origin: Mexico

A Little Life | Author: Hanya Yanagihara | Country of Origin: USA

Middlesex | Author: Jeffrey Eugenides | Country of Origin: USA

The Namesake | Author: Jhumpa Lahiri | Country of Origin: India/USA

Near to the Wild Heart | Author: Clarice Lispector | Country of Origin: Brazil

The Orphan Master’s Son | Author: Adam Johnson | Country of Origin: USA

Portnoy’s Complaint | Author: Philip Roth | Country of Origin: USA

The Snow Leopard | Author: Peter Matthiessen | Country of Origin: USA

Stoner | Author: John Williams | Country of Origin: USA

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? | Author: Raymond Carver | Country of Origin: USA

About the author

Ewa Zubek

VP Social

Ewa [ey-va] was born into a newly democratic Poland, but raised in England, where she studied French and German at the University of Oxford. An insatiable explorer, she’s lived in Florence, Berlin, Brussels, London, Warsaw and Singapore, worked at diplomatic institutions and has written for international publications, including The Huffington Post. A regular contributor to Culture Trip since its very beginning, Ewa quickly fell in love with the pace and creativity of the start-up world and, soon after, became the company’s first Managing Editor and then Director of Operations. Now, as the platform’s Social Media Director, Ewa oversees social strategy across the hubs and the rest of the world. Outside of The Culture Trip, you can find her writing (unabashedly), reading (critically) or country-hopping (methodically).