When I set myself on this challenge to read one book from each country of the world, I knew I was going to come across some bumps on the road when it came to finding books, especially from authors from small countries.

My inspiration was Ann Morgan. She also set herself on the same journey, but her challenge was much harder. She gave herself only a year to complete this task and the books had all to be translations, published in the country in question (as she points out herself, only 4% of the books published in the UK are translations, Canada is probably not very far). Her blog is still a source of many ideas for me and it’s really interesting to see how the international community banded together to help her, even translating some items in her list into English.

I knew I wanted to give myself more than a year for this project (this is a lifelong challenge). I also wanted to have an easier time in the process, and most of all, find new authors to love. So when I set up the challenge on Story Graph I decided to expand my pool a little more, my main criteria being where the author was born. As long as they had a strong connection to their homeland that translated into their literary work, they were in.

And that’s when I created a new problem for myself. Or better yet – two new problems. The first one was that I realized that a lot of the authors on my list, despite being born in another country, were residents either from the U.S. or the U.K. This is expected, I live in Canada, and have way more access to what comes from the publishing industry from those countries than others.

The second problem is defining the nationality of some authors who immigrated to other countries, especially when they did that at a young age. At what point do they stop being Chilean/Palestinian/Nigerian and start being classified as American, or British? Or even more complex, in the case of the Indian author Salman Rushdie, as British-American?

Some cases are easier than others. Chilean author Isabel Allende, for instance. She immigrated to the U.S. in the 80s, but she is still considered an icon of Latin American literature since her style (a mix of historical fiction and magical realism) and the topics of her books are so ingrained in Latin American culture.

In other cases though, this distinction is harder to make. Take for instance the author Yung Pueblo. He was born in Ecuador and his family immigrated to the U.S. when he was a kid. That doesn’t necessarily make him American, but so far as I can tell, I can’t see any evident traces of Ecuadorian culture in his writing, other than the name he chose. He writes about mindfulness and meditation, so I don’t even see how he would fit that theme there. I originally placed him in the “Ecuador” column, but on second thought I think I’ll move him back to the “U.S.” list.

There are other examples. One of the authors I read this year, Wayétu Moore, immigrated from Liberia to the U.S. also when she was a child. But one of her books is all about the foundation of Liberia, she does a lot of work to expand literature access for children in her home country and has been open about her process of acceptance of where she comes from. I can also name Téa Obreht, who wrote about magical realism in a country very similar to Austria, where she’s originally from, and Hala Alyan who wrote about the Palestine diaspora.

All of this makes me reflect that belonging to a place doesn’t depend on how long or if ever you have lived there (ask any exiled Palestinian family). As a recent dual citizen, I’ve been grappling with that topic more and more. I’ve been calling myself Brazilian-Canadian, and over time this makes more and more sense. If I wrote a book, would I be put in the “Brazil” column, or the “Canada” one? I don’t think I can separate my two identities like this and I don’t think we should.

But I still have the issue of counting books completed and countries read, and I can’t have two entries for the same book.

So I must choose.

I hope I have made the right choices and done these authors justice.