France ~ Sarah's Key

Amy suggests a good book for France would be Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.  Here's her review, posted today.

Sarah's Key ~ by Tatiana de Rosnay, 2007

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.

Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.

Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.

I (Bonnie) read this book in 2010 and think it's a great novel to represent France.  Here's the first paragraph:

The girl was the first to hear the loud pounding on the door.  Her room was closest to the entrance of the apartment.  At first, dazed with sleep, she thought it was her father, coming up from his hiding place in the cellar.  He'd forgotten his keys, and was impatient because nobody had heard his first, timid knock.  But then came the voices, strong and brutal in the silence of the night.  Nothing to do with her father.  "Police!  Open up!  Now!"

Netherlands ~ The Dinner

Amy in Belgium writes:

"Hi Bonnie!  I've got another entry for you for The Netherlands, this time:  The Dinner (Het Diner) by Herman Koch (2009)."

In her review of the book today, Amy says:

"It was definitely original, it gives you a good feel for modern life in the Netherlands, and it is a quick read."

The Dinner by Herman Koch (2012 in English), originally published as Het Diner in Dutch in 2009, has been translated into 33 languages.

Summary:  Two families struggle to make the hardest decision of their lives — all over the course of one meal.  Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse, but behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said.  Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son.  The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families.  As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children.  As civility disintegrates, these parents show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

Maybe the best short summary I've read while writing this post comes from The Guardian:

"Like We Need to Talk About Kevin, it is about the nature of evil, and the extent to which we can blame parents for the misdeeds of their children."

Australia ~ Lost Voices

Christopher Koch

Pam recommends a book about Australia:  "I just read a wonderful book by Christopher Koch called Lost Voices for my book group.  I reviewed it on my blog.  It takes place in Hobart.  We have convict history here and there is a lot written about it.  People were transported here from England in the late 1700s and 1800s and it started out as a penal settlement which is an unusual beginning for a country.  Convicts also went to Sydney as well.  New Zealand was too violent with the Maoris for settlement there and the USA was in the middle of the American Revolution, so Australia was the destination."

Lost Voices ~ by Christopher Koch, 2012, fiction (Australia)

Young Hugh Dixon believes he can save his father from ruin if he asks his estranged great-uncle Walter — a wealthy lawyer who lives alone in a Tasmanian farmhouse passed down through the family — for help.  As he is drawn into Walter's rarefied world, Hugh discovers that both his uncle and the farmhouse are links to a notorious episode in the mid-nineteenth century.  Walter's father, Martin, was living in the house when it was raided by members of an outlaw community run by Lucas Wilson, a charismatic ex-soldier attempting to build a utopia.  But like later societies with communitarian ideals, Nowhere Valley was controlled by the gun, with Wilson as benevolent dictator.  Twenty-year-old Martin's sojourn in the Valley as Wilson's disciple has become an obsession with Walter Dixon:  one which haunts his present and keeps the past tantalizingly close.  As Walter encourages Hugh's ambition to become an artist, and again comes to his aid when one of Hugh's friends is charged with murder, the way life's patterns repeat themselves from one generation to another becomes eerily apparent.

Read more about the author, Christopher Koch.
Read Pam's review on her blog, Travellin' Penguin.

Japan ~ 1Q84

Amy recommends 1Q84 as a novel:  "1Q84 tells the strange story of Aomame and Tengo as they get caught up in events in a world that is parallel to the real world of Tokyo in 1984."  Learning about the country is also important:  "What I also expected and enjoy most about reading Murakami, however, is the little window it gives me into life in Japan: the way he describes the foods they eat and how they prepare them, their homes, public transport, the way people interact with each other, the educational system, and life in general."

1Q84 ~ by Haruki Murakami, 2011, fiction (Japan)

The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.  A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84.  Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project.  He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.  As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer:  a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.  This is a dystopian novel to rival George Orwell’s 1984.

This novel was first published in three volumes in Japan in 2009–2010.  Its first printing sold out the day it was released, and it reached sales of one million within a month, according to Wikipedia.  The English edition was published in 2011.

Tasmania, Australia

I (Bonnie) recommend this novel that I read a decade or so ago.  These discussion questions from ReadingGroupGuide helped me remember some of what I read.  Wikipedia has an interesting plot summary.

English Passengers ~ by Matthew Kneale, 2000, fiction (Australia)

In 1857 when Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley and his band of rum smugglers from the Isle of Man have most of their contraband confiscated by British Customs, they are forced to put their ship up for charter.  The only takers are two eccentric Englishmen who want to embark for the other side of the globe.  The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson believes the Garden of Eden was on the island of Tasmania.  His traveling partner, Dr. Thomas Potter, unbeknownst to Wilson, is developing a sinister thesis about the races of men.  Meanwhile, an aboriginal in Tasmania named Peevay recounts his people's struggles against the invading British, a story that begins in 1824, moves into the present with approach of the English passengers in 1857, and extends into the future in 1870.  These characters and many others come together in a storm of voices that vividly bring a past age to life.

Libya

Amy @ In Consideration of Books said, "Hi Bonnie, I have a book for you for a country you don't yet have listed and that is very topical right now:  Libya.  It was an excellent book and the author just has his second book out this month.  Here is the link to my review."

In the Country of Men ~ by Hisham Matar, 2006

On a white-hot day in Tripoli, Libya, in the summer of 1979, nine-year-old Suleiman is shopping in the market square with his mother.  His father is away on business — but Suleiman is sure he has just seen him, standing across the street in a pair of dark glasses.  But why isn't he waving?  And why doesn't he come over when he knows Suleiman's mother is falling apart?  Whispers and fears intensify around Suleiman:  his best friend's father disappears and is next seen being interrogated on state television; a man parks his car outside the house every day and asks strange questions; and his mother frantically burns his father's books.  As Suleiman begins to wonder whether his father has disappeared for good, it feels as if the walls of his home will break with the secrets that are being held within.  This book was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.

Luxembourg

Amy @ In Consideration of Books wrote:  "Are you still active with Books Around the World?  I have another suggestion for a country you don't have listed, Luxembourg.   Here's my review."

The Expats ~ by Chris Pavone, 2012

Can we ever escape our secrets?  Kate Moore is a working mother, struggling to make ends meet, to raise children, to keep a spark in her marriage . . . and to maintain an increasingly unbearable life-defining secret.  So when her husband is offered a lucrative job in Luxembourg, she jumps at the chance to leave behind her double-life, to start anew.

She begins to reinvent herself as an expat, finding her way in a language she doesn’t speak, doing the housewifely things she’s never before done — playdates and coffee mornings, daily cooking and never-ending laundry.  Meanwhile, her husband works incessantly, at a job Kate has never understood, for a banking client she’s not allowed to know.  He’s becoming distant and evasive; she’s getting lonely and bored.

Then another American couple arrives.  Kate soon becomes suspicious that these people are not who they say they are, and she’s terrified that her own past is catching up to her.  So Kate begins to dig, to peel back the layers of deception that surround her.  She discovers fake offices and shell corporations and a hidden gun, a mysterious farmhouse and numbered accounts with bewildering sums of money, and finally unravels the mind-boggling long-play con that threatens her family, her marriage, and her life.

Himalayas ~ India

Jane, who doesn't have a blog (yet), recommends Himalayan Dhaba as a good book about the Himalayas.

Himalayan Dhaba by Craig Joseph Danner is set in the Indian Himalayas.  After a hair-raising journey, Dr. Mary Davis arrives in a remote Himalayan village with just a backpack and a box of medicines. Expecting to work with a talented Indian surgeon, she finds instead that he is missing and she is now the only doctor within a hundred miles. When an injured tourist stumbles into her overcrowded clinic, he triggers a series of events that connects an unusual mix of characters: Phillip, the spoiled son of a British diplomat; Antone, an aging addict who attempts to kidnap him; Meena, a local village girl who embarks on an improbable rescue; and Amod, the lonely waiter in the local dhaba, who secretly looks after Mary.

Nigeria and England

Helen said, "Here's a link to my review of Little Bee, which would fit under England and Nigeria."

Little Bee by Chris Cleave is "a haunting novel about the tenuous friendship that blooms between two disparate strangers—one an illegal Nigerian refugee, the other a recent widow from suburban London."  The back cover says:

"This is the story of two women.  Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice, the kind of choice we hope you never have to face.  Two years later, they meet again -- the story starts there.  Once you have read it, you'll want to tell your frienmds about it.  When you do, please don't tell them what happens.  The magic is in how the story unfolds."

Bonnie says, "Much of the book takes place in England, but some really important events take place in Nigeria.  I also recommend this book for both countries."

Uruguay

Bonnie said, "I've found a good book for Uruguay.  The Invisible Mountain is a novel by Carolina de Robertis.  Read my review of the book by clicking here."

On the first day of the year 1900, a small town deep in the Uruguayan countryside gathers to witness a miracle — the mysterious reappearance of a lost infant, Pajarita — and unravel its portents for the century. Later, as a young woman in the capital city — Montevideo, brimming with growth and promise — Pajarita begins a lineage of fiercely independent women with her enamored husband, Ignazio, a young immigrant from Italy and the inheritor of both a talent for boat making and a latent, more sinister family trait. Their daughter, Eva, a fragile yet ferociously stubborn beauty intent on becoming a poet, overcomes an early, shattering betrayal to embark on a most unconventional path toward personal and artistic fulfillment. And Eva’s daughter, Salomé, awakening to both her sensuality and political convictions amid the violent turmoil of the late 1960s, finds herself dangerously attracted to a cadre of urban guerrilla rebels, despite the terrible consequences of such principled fearlessness.