Books about Reunion & worldwide literature

A recent exchange with Ann Morgan, who's currently reading her way round the world, got me thinking about Reunion Island books in English. As far as I'm aware, with the exception of 'Bourbon Island 1730', the list I came up with contains only books that I have been written directly in English and not translated. In fact as far as I know there are no English translations of books by well-known Reunionese authors like Daniel Vaxelaire or Axel Gauvin, although the latter's books have been translated into German.

Books about Reunion I haven't read myself (but which are all on my Bookmooch wish list!):

• Reunion: An Island in Search of an Identity by Laurent Medea
• Monsters and Revolutionaries: Colonial Family Romance and Metissage by Françoise Verges
• Island Born Of Fire: Volcano Piton de la Fournaise by Dr Robert B. Trombly

Bourbon Island 1730

Books I've read myself:

• Crags and Craters: Rambles in the Island of Reunion by William Dudley Olivier (this is my favourite).
• The Last Colony: An Experience of Reunion Island by Michael Steane (an e-book but full of inaccuracies)
• Six Months in Reunion: A Clergyman's Holiday, and How He Passed it by Patrick Beaton (I didn't like this much).
• Bourbon Island 1730 by Appollo & Lewis Trondheim (a graphic novel)
• Island Awakening by Lynne Martin (romantic fiction).
• Dead Sexy by Kathy Lette (a "satire on the sex war")
• Second Chance and its sequel Second Chance Sister by Linda Kepner (romantic fiction - thinly disguised sequels to François Truffaut's film The Mississippi Mermaid)

I've written reviews of all of the above books.

Also: Bonnes Vacances!: A Crazy Family Adventure in the French Territories by Rosie Millard is about a 4 month tour of the DOM-TOMs Rosie made with her husband and four young children to make a documentary series for the Travel Channel ("Croissants in the Jungle"). Its final chapter covers Réunion (briefly); see my review of the book here.

In the introduction I mentioned Ann Morgan who is currently reading her way around as many of the globe’s 196 independent countries as she can, sampling one book from every nation. (She's also recently included a Rest of The World wildcard section, hence our exchange about Reunion Island). However as she asked herself: what counts as a story? Is it by a person born in that place? Is it written in the country? Can it be about another nation state? While in some respects she's still answering that question she had to lay down her terms and so decided to limit herself to all narratives that could be read to full effect by one reader on their own e.g. memoirs, novels, short stories, novellas, biographies, narrative poems and reportage, but not non-narrative poetry and plays.

It got me wondering about which countries I'd already read literature from, and after a quick tour of my bookshelves (and my memory!) this is the (non-exhaustive) list I came up with, in English and French:

• Algeria - L'étranger [The Outsider] - Albert Camus [Author/Setting]
• Australia - The Secret River - Kate Grenville [Author/Setting]
• Belgium - L'Enfant de Noé - Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt [Author/Setting]
• Botswana - The Kalahari Typing School for Men - Alexander McCall Smith [Setting; Author is British]
• Brazil - Rouge Brésil [Brazil Red] - Jean-Christophe Rufin [Setting; Author is French]
• Cameroon - La saison de l'ombre - Léonora Miano [Author/Setting] (added November 2013)

The Kalahari Typing School for Men

• Canada - Where White Horses Gallop - Beatrice McNeil [Author/Setting]
• Central African Republic - Princesse aux Pieds Nu - Evelyne Durieux [Author/Setting]
• Burma - The Piano Tuner - Daniel Mason [Setting; Author is British]
• China - Leaving Mother Lake: A Childhood at the Edge of the World - Yang Erche Namu [Author/Setting]
• Czech Republic - L'Insoutenable légèreté de l'être [The Unbearable Lightness of Being] - Milan Kundera [Author/Setting]
• Cuba - Our Man In Havana - Graham Greene [Setting; Author was British]
• Democratic Republic of Congo - The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver [Setting; Author is American]
• Denmark (& Greenland) - Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow - Peter Høeg [Author/Setting]
• Egypt - Woman at Point Zero - Nawal El Saadawi (translated by Sherif Hetata) [Author/Setting]
• French Polynesia (Tahiti) - Breadfruit: A Novel - Célestine Hitiura Vaite [Author/Setting] [August 2014 - I read the French translation L'Arbre à Pain by Henri Theureau]
• Germany - The Book Thief - Markus Zusak [Setting; Author is Australian]
• Haiti - Island Beneath the Sea - Isabel Allende (translated by Margaret Sayers Peden) [Setting; Author is Chilean American]

"Island Beneath the Sea"

• Hawaii - Comfort Woman - Nora Okja Keller [Author/Setting]
• Iceland - L'homme du Lac [The Draining Lake] - Arnaldur Indridason (translated by Eric Boury) [Author/Setting]
• India - A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry [Author/Setting]
• Indonesia - Krakatoa - Simon Winchester [Setting; Author is British]
• (Inner) Mongolia - Wolf Totem - Jiang Rong (translated by Howard Goldblatt) [Author/Setting]
• Iran - Jamais Sans Ma Fille [Not Without My Daughter] - Betty Mahmoody [Author/Setting]
• Ireland - Angela's Ashes - Franck McCourt [Author/Setting]
• Israel - The Red Tent - Anita Diamant [Setting; Author is American]
• Italy - The Baron in the Trees - Italo Calvino (translated by Archibald Colquhoun) [Author/Setting]
• Jamaica (& Dominica) - Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [Author/Setting]
• Japan - Out - Natsuo Kirino [Author/Setting]
• Kiribati - Paradis [avant liquidation] - Julien Blanc-Gras [Setting; Author is French] (June 2014)
• Lebanon - The Fifth Mountain - Paulo Coelho [Setting; Author is Brazilian]
• Madagascar - Muddling Through In Madagascar - Dervla Murphy [Setting; Author is Irish]
• Malaysia (Borneo) - My Life in Sarawak - Margaret Brooke [Author/Setting]
• Mauritania - Le Tambour des Larmes - Beyrouk [Author/Setting]
• Mauritius - Paul & Virginie - Bernardin de St Pierre [Setting; Author was French]
• Mayotte - Mon Mari Est Plus Qu'un Fou : C'est Un Homme - Nassur Attoumani [Author/Setting] 
• Netherlands - Girl with a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier [Setting; Author is American]
• New Zealand - Behind Closed Doors - Ngaire Thomas [Author/Setting]
• Nigeria - Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe [Author/Setting]
• North Korea - The Aquariums of Pyongyang - Kang Chol-Hwan [Author/Setting]
• Norway - Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder (translated by Paulette Møller) [Author/Setting]
• Pakistan - The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid [Author/Setting]
• Rodrigues - Voyage à Rodrigues - JMG Le Clezio [Setting; Author is French]
• Russia - Dans Les Forets de Sibérie - Sylvain Tesson [Setting; Author is French]
• Seychelles - Travelling Hopefully - Maggie Makepeace [Setting; Author is British]
• South Africa - Disgrace - JM Coetzee [Author/Setting]
• South Korea - Who Ate Up All The Shinga? - Park Wan-Suh (translated by Yu Young-nan) [Author/Setting]
• Spain - The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón [Author/Setting]
• Sweden - Millennium Trilogy - Steig Larsson (translated by 'Reg Kreeland') [Author/Setting]
• Tibet - Voyage d'une Parisienne à Lhassa [My Journey to Lhasa] - Alexandra David-Néel [Setting; Author was French]
• Trinidad  - A House for Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul [Author/Setting]
• Tromelin - Les Naufrages de l'ïle Tromelin - Irène Frain [Setting; Author is French]
• Turkey - My Name Is Red - Orhan Pamuk (translated by Erdağ Göknar) [Author/Setting]
• United Arab Emirates - The Wink of the Mona Lisa and other stories from the Gulf - Mohammad Al Murr (translated from the Arabic by Jack Briggs) [Author/Setting] [October 2015]
• Uzbekistan (& Iran) - Samarcande [Samarkand] - Amin Maalouf [Setting; Author is from Lebanon]
• Vietnam - L'Amant [The Lover] - Marguerite Duras [Author/Setting]
• Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) - The Grass is Singing - Doris Lessing [Author/Setting]  [August 2014]

Samarcande

Notes:

• I've arbitrarily excluded the UK, France and the USA as I've read so many books from these countries I'd have trouble choosing just one!
• If I've read several books from a country I've generally just listed my favourite.
• I've also taken liberties by listing some non-independent regions (e.g. Rodrigues, Hawaii, Tibet, Tromelin).
• I excluded some books (such as Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, or William Boyd's African novels) that take place in unidentified countries.
• I also excluded books (such as Elie Wiesel's Night) whose action takes place in several countries.
• If I've read a book in French but an English translation exists I've added the English title in brackets [].
• I've included books not written by natives of the country in question.

My conclusions:

I have vast swathes of the planet where I haven't read any literature from, for example South America or the Pacific! Places like South East Asia or Central Asia are patchy too. Although I list Paul Coelho and Isabel Allende the books of theirs that I read were not set in their native countries. And despite living and travelling for three years in Asia I've mainly read Korean books (North and South) but very little from the many other countries we travelled to in the region. I need to broaden my horizons even more.

What about you? Do you enjoy reading books from other countries? Do you have any books to recommend? Is literature from your native (or adopted) country easy to find in English?

P.S. Here's the link to Ann Morgan's site: A Year Of Reading The World. Other reading around the world blogs I've come across are: Reading the World, The Rushlight List and World Lit Up.

This post originally appeared on A Smart Translator's Reunion.

Related articles

• Island awakening: book review
• Press article round-up
• Cimetière Marin, St Paul
• Whale-watching
• The 'blogosphere'
• Bourbon Island 1730: book review

Scuba diving in Iceland

Mention scuba diving in Iceland to most people and - divers themselves or not - they'll look at you like you're mad and give a shiver. But during the week we spent in Iceland this is exactly what we did for three days!

Eurasian plate on the right, North American plate on the left

Our first stop was at Þingvallavatn, Iceland's largest natural lake, which is located in Þingvellir National Park about an hour or so's drive from Reykjavik. We were going to be diving Silfra, a rift that separates the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.

map showing northern part of Þingvallavatn

path to Silfra dive site (note handrail leading to diving platform)

initial part of Silfra rift, seen from above water

Þingvallavatn contains very cold (3-4°C) but incredibly clear water, which has taken 30-100 years to filter through lava fields from melting glaciers. It's technically drinkable although I have to admit I didn't try it.

Divers are attracted by the fantastic visibility and the geological curiosity of the site - there's not many places in the world where you can dive between (and touch) two tectonic plates. These plates are moving apart at a rate of about 2cm per year.

Silfra has been placed on the top five diving destinations list by many diving publications. Visibility can reach end-of-sight and is rated at 150 to 300 metres.

one of only two fish we saw during our Silfra dives

Silfra's deepest known point is 63 metres.

the other fish!

The extreme cold means dives generally only last 30 minutes. However after a surface interval we did the same dive again, and visibility was even better the second time as there were no other divers around (all the photos are actually from the first dive).

bright green wispy algae

Towards the end of the dive you turn into Silfra Lagoon, which is very shallow (about 5m) but quite wide: 120 metres.

in the lagoon

in the lagoon

The far side of the lagoon marks the exit point from the dive site, and from there it's a short (but breathless) hike back to the car park for a warm drink.

in the lagoon

For our second day's diving we headed to the Reykjanes Peninsula, south-west of Reykjavik, to dive in Kleifarvatn freshwater lake.

At Kleifarvatn

pre-dive checks

In 2000 two major earthquakes led to 20% of the lake's water disappearing, and it was noticed that the lake held submerged hot springs. The water level is now back to its previous level, for divers delight!

You don't need to dive very deep to see the bubbling springs - our maximum depth on this dive was only 8m.

Kleifarvatn's bubbling lake bed

This was our warmest dive in Iceland - water temperature at the surface was 16°C, and 13°C a few metres below.

Kleifarvatn's bubbling lake bed

At one place a dark, mysterious, seemingly bottomless hole has opened up - our dive guide told us it wasn't there a few months before.

If this is what the lake does to fish, what will it do to me?!

But only after diving did our dive guide tell us the legend about a worm-like creature the size of a whale who lurks in the lake - the local equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster!

For my husband and I it reminded us of one of dives in Pulau Weh (Sumatra) when we dived on similar hot springs in another very volcanic part of the world.

 fascinating to watch

Still on the peninsula, our second dive of the day should have been in the sea near an aluminium smelting plant at Hafnarfjörður, however heavy swell and poor visibility meant we ended up aborting the dive.

dive site near Hafnarfjörður

Our third and final day of diving was long but worth while. We set off at 6am for a 5 hour drive to the fjord of Eyjafjordur in Northern Iceland to dive geothermal chimneys at a site known as Strytan.

illustration showing Eyjafördur geothermal chimneys

We set off from the tiny port of Hjalteyri, a small fishing village founded in the late 19th century.

jellyfish in the port, Hjalteyri

The geothermal chimneys are remarkable in that they are the world's only undersea chimneys that can be explored using conventional (i.e. scuba) diving equipment. (Similar chimneys elsewhere in the world are at depths of 2000m or more). They are also home to an abundance of thermophilic organisms, some found nowhere else in the world. 

the descent

The chimneys are continuously growing, the tallest of them currently towers around 60m above the seabed; its summit is about 15 metres below the surface. Although the chimneys are government-protected areas sightseeing diving is allowed, but you must proceed with great care.

the top of the tallest chimney appears

The photo below isn't at an angle - the fish actually swim with their heads pointing downwards, presumably because of the chimney's freshwater current.

The chimneys are made of siliceous deposits. Hot, mineral-rich freshwater originating from the Icelandic highlands rises at a rate of up to 100 litres per second through the seabed, creating new crust (up to 300 tons per year) when the hot freshwater meets the cold sea.

close-up of the chimney

The freshwater coming from the chimney has a pH of 10 and a temperature of 72-75°C and is apparently 1100 years old.

soft coral

Water temperature during the dive was about 9-10°C at the surface and 7°C at 30m.

The site was discovered by diver Erlendur Bogason in 1997.

note the jellyfish in the foreground

We then had a brief surface interval in our boat (during which we saw a whale) before diving on another geothermal cone site known as Arnarnesstrytur (or 'French Gardens').

Eyjafordur

surface interval

Arnarnesstrytur is a group of much smaller cones at depths from 18 to 46 metres. 

cone at Arnarnesstrytur

The cones themselves range is size from 0.5 to 12 metres high; we dived on the shallowest cone at 18m, from which hot water at 78°C streamed.

Strytan and Arnarnesstrytur are the only two protected underwater areas in Iceland. Strytan protected area is 200m in radius, and Arnarnesstrytur protected area (2007) is 400 x 1000m.

What was fascinating to me on this dive were the aggressive purple-blue wolffish - I'd never seen anything like them. They made me think of a human face stuck on a fish body - rather like drawings on those ancient maps labelled "here be sea monsters".

Atlantic wolffish

In Iceland the species is called steinbítur, which translates literally as "stone biter". I don't know about stone, but one certainly tried biting our dive guide's buttocks!

Atlantic wolffish

We also saw lumpsuckers guarding their eggs.

Face to face with a lumpsucker

Lumpsucker seen from the side

soft coral

After our two dives it was time to make a quick trip to Akureyri (Iceland's second city - population 17000) for a late lunch before heading back to Reykjavik. Amazingly, because of the long summer days although we left Reykjavik at 6am and arrived back at 10pm it was light all day long.

jellyfish

Our Icelandic dives were definitely amongst the most memorable we've ever done.  Our incredible underwater experiences there more than made up for any cold we might have felt.

Related posts:

• Reykjavik - the world's most northerly capital
• Iceland - nature at work ... or at play?

Suggested reading:

The Draining Lake: A Thriller (Reykjavik Thriller) by Arnaldur Indriðason. A 2004 crime novel by the famous Icelandic author, featuring the fictional Detective Erlendur. The title is based on the real Kleifarvatn, and in the novel, the dropping water level revealed a body long hidden in the lake.

Useful links:

• Silfra.org 
• Dive Iceland (the company we dived with)
• Dive.is
• Strytan Divecentre