Virtual Travel

A Smithsonian magazine special report

A Literary Scholar Takes Us Around the World in Eighty Books

Harvard professor David Damrosch’s new release has readers traveling to London, Paris, Nigeria, Tokyo and beyond without ever leaving home

Jennifer Nalewicki

Travel Correspondent

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Books and travel have always gone hand in hand, but the current pandemic, in which people from around the world experienced mass lockdowns, made the need for escape through the written word even more crucial. 

In his new book Around the World in 80 Books, author and literary scholar David Damrosch takes his readers on a global journey using some of the most transportive books ever published, from Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time , set in high-society Paris, to Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis , capturing life in Tehran during the Iranian Revolution. A recognizable force in the field of literature and a professor at Harvard, Damrosch weaves in anecdotes from his own life as a ravenous reader, starting from a very young age while browsing the dusty bookshop near his school bus stop, to his many years teaching. Together with excerpts pulled from each book, Damrosch builds an itinerary that circumnavigates the globe—and doesn’t require a passport to enjoy. His carefully curated compendium of must-read written works spans time periods and continents, and includes a diverse selection of voices.   

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Around the World in 80 Books

A transporting and illuminating voyage around the globe, through classic and modern literary works that are in conversation with one another and with the world around them.

“As [the Roman lyric poet] Horace once wrote, ‘literature is both sweet and useful,’” Damrosch says. “And since he put ‘sweetness’ first, it seems to me that literature provides an exceptional outlook and different way to look at the world while being the most pleasurable way to do so.”  

Here are eight of the 80 books Damrosch highlights: 

The Tale of Genji , by Murasaki Shikibu (Tokyo)

Written in the early 11th century by Murasaki Shikibu, a Japanese poet-turned-novelist and lady-in-waiting, The Tale of Genji tells the story of Hikaru Genji, the fictional son of a Japanese emperor during the Heian period (794 to 1185) who finds himself unexpectedly removed from the line of succession. Often considered the world’s first novel , it wouldn’t be until many centuries later, in 1925, that the 54-chapter tome would receive an English translation by the scholar Arthur Waley. The massive work not only transports readers to aristocratic Japan, but to an age that’s far removed from modern times. “Murasaki gives us a new perspective on the present moment,” Damrosch says. “She’s a great master of this and challenges us to begin to understand what so many of her assumptions and expectations are, challenging us to read more carefully.”

The Country of the Pointed Firs , by Sarah Orne Jewett (Maine)

Despite having lived her entire life in Maine, author and poet Sarah Orne Jewett opted to create a storyline for her 1896 novel, The Country of the Pointed Firs , built entirely around the experiences of a summer visitor. In the book, the narrator, a writer from Boston, visits the fictional coastal village of Dunnet Landing in an effort to finish writing her book and becomes transfixed by the solitude that the area’s windswept cliffs and lush greenery provide. In his interpretation of the work, Damrosch points to a review published in 1994 by the Library of America that describes Dunnet Landing as an “imaginary town that will be recognizable to anyone who has been to Acadia National Park or Mount Desert Island.” He adds, “Literature in its very nature provides a perspective on the world, both inside and out. Authors often write from a distance, combining the familiar with the unfamiliar, the native with the foreign, and yet compellingly write and connect audiences to places that are otherwise unfamiliar.” 

In Search of Lost Time , by Marcel Proust (Paris)

“For me, Paris is Proust,” writes Damrosch of his analysis of In Search of Lost Time , a multi-volume work published between 1913 and 1927 and inspired by the novelist’s recollections of his youth in the Parisian borough of Auteuil. Damrosch had many distinctive scenes to choose from, such as when Proust attends a fancy soiree at a prince’s home in Paris to family trips to the fictitious seaside town of Balbec. One in particular is unequivocally French, though, and it’s when the narrator eats a tea-soaked madeleine, a dessert synonymous with France. Proust writes, “I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shiver ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin . . . I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy?” Damrosch says it’s no surprise that Proust would focus on food as a transportive device. “There’s something fundamental about food,” he says. “What we consume and enriches us, and what we take in. Both literature and food are what enrich our souls.” 

Things Fall Apart , by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)

Set in pre-colonial Nigeria beginning in the 1890s and leading to the inevitable invasion of the African continent by Christian missionaries from Europe, Things Fall Apart provides a snapshot of African society through the eyes of Okonkwo, a fictional Igbo man. Opting to divide his 1958 novel into three parts, Nigerian author Chinua Achebe gives readers a front row seat to how life abruptly changes for Okonkwo with the introduction of imperialism, creating two strikingly different worlds for the protagonist to navigate. One aspect of the novel that Damrosch highlights is language usage. Damrosch writes, “Achebe’s portrayal of African society from within is closely linked to his project of creating an English prose infused with oral tales and proverbs [found throughout Africa].” He adds, “As a student of literature, it’s really interesting what happens when the European novel starts to be adapted to other parts of the world where there wasn’t a novelistic tradition, and Achebe is very clearly building both on and against that. He’s not only looking at his novel from isolation, but also poetic language and trying to think of how to use the English language as an anti-Imperialist.” 

Persepolis , Marjane Satrapi (Iran)

Damrosch describes Persepolis as “an autobiography, a capsule history of the [Iranian Revolution] and its aftermath, and a meditation on the cultural complexity of the contemporary world.” Published in 2000, the illustrated memoir follows Marji, a 10-year-old girl living in Tehran, Iran, in an upper-middle-class household, and the dramatic societal shift that occurs during the Iranian Revolution, an uprising that ended in 1979 and resulted in the overthrowing of the Pahlavi Dynasty and the rise in religious extremism. Using black-and-white illustrations paired with compelling prose, author Marjane Satrapi shows how quickly life changes for her and her family as they adjust to living under a new political regime and the resulting war that not only upends her childhood naivete but also her safety; at the age of 14, her parents move her to Austria to escape the war. “ Persepolis is an extraordinary act of personal and cultural memory,” Damrosch writes, “though in its highly individual framing it certainly isn’t (and doesn’t claim to be) the whole story of Iranian history and culture.” 

Mrs. Dalloway , by Virginia Woolf (London)

Author Virginia Woolf opted to set her 1925 novel in her hometown of London, placing it at a time soon after the final bomb dropped during World War I. Damrosch describes Mrs. Dalloway as “one of the most localized of books,” and readers don’t have to read far to confirm that this post-war tale is firmly set in central London. The locale becomes apparent in the opening scene when the protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway, takes a leisurely stroll one day in June along recognizable streets like Bond and Victoria as well as in Regent’s Park in preparation for a party she’s hosting later that evening for the city’s well-to-do. The novel itself unfolds over the course of a single day, giving Woolf the freedom to plant her story firmly in a very specific time and place without deviating outside its borders. “This is very much an homage to London,” Damrosch says. “There are specific spaces, such as the Army and Navy store, that [exhibit] an intense awareness of place. Overall, the life of a city has never been better evoked than by Woolf.”  

The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas , Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (Brazil)

From the 16th century to 1888, when Brazil abolished slavery, approximately five million slaves were transported from Africa to the South American country. By then nearly half of Brazil’s population was comprised of people with both African and European heritage, including Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, whom Damrosch praises as “Brazil’s leading novelist.” Machado’s mixed heritage inspired him to write The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas , a novel published in 1881 and narrated by a dead protagonist by the name of Brás Cubas from the grave. In his writing, Machado is highly critical of the patriarchal and slave-owning society in which he lives. Damrosch writes, “In his ‘free form' novel as in his life, Machado de Assis made his way, like some Yosemite free climber, up the cracks and fault lines of Brazilian society. He left us an incomparable map of a distinctly un-utopian Brazil in the melancholy comedy of his deceased yet immortal hero’s journey around life.”

Love in a Fallen City , Eileen Chang (China)

Taking place largely in Shanghai, where Eileen Chang was born and raised, as well as Hong Kong, where she moved for college, Love in a Fallen City is a 1943 novella about a woman named Bai Luisu and her love interest, Fan Liuyan. During a romantic escapade to Hong Kong, Liuyan declares his love for Luisu on December 7, 1941, which, unbeknownst to them, also happens to be the same day as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor an ocean away in Hawaii. A day later, the couple watches helplessly as the early stages of World War II start to unfold as Japan invades Hong Kong. Chang offers a front-row seat of the war from the perspective of an onlooker. “Early on, Chang developed a keen eye for the complexities of life in a Shanghai poised—or caught—between tradition and modernity, waning patriarchy and nascent feminism, and Asian and European cultures,” Damrosch writes. “Her stories of the early 1940s were written under Japanese occupation and avoid making open political statements, but the wartime setting is always in the background.”

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Jennifer Nalewicki | | READ MORE

Jennifer Nalewicki is a Brooklyn-based journalist. Her articles have been published in The New York Times , Scientific American , Popular Mechanics , United Hemispheres and more. You can find more of her work at her website .

review of around the world in 80 books

Around the World in 80 Books: A Global Reading List

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Kate Scott is a bookstagrammer and strategic web designer serving women business owners and creative entrepreneurs. Follow her on Instagram @ parchmentgirl and visit her website at katescott.co/books .

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80 Books from 80 Countries Around the World

Ready for some serious armchair travel? Take a trip around the globe with these books from the eighty most populated countries in the world.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Algeria –  Algerian White   by Assia Djebar:  The author remembers three friends–a psychologist, a sociologist, and a dramatist–who were killed during the Algerian struggle for independence.

Angola –  Good Morning Comrades   by Ondjaki:  A twelve-year-old boy and his friends grow up during the confusing time of the Angolan Civil War.

Argentina –  He Who Searches   by Luisa Valenzuela:  A professor of semiotics disguises himself and visits a prostitute two days a week in order to psychologically analyze her without her knowledge.

Australia –  The Thorn Birds   by Colleen McCullough:  A family saga spanning fifty-four years set in the Australian Outback.

A Golden Age by Tahmina Anam

Belgium –  Wonder   by Hugo Claus:  A man descends into madness after he finds himself trapped in a remote castle filled with Nazis twenty years after the end of World War II.

Brazil –  Symphony in White   by Adriana  Lisboa:  Following the death of their mother, family secrets come to light and two sisters face their past.

Burkina Faso –  The Parachute Drop   by Norbert Zongo:  A paranoid dictator (a caricature of Blaise Compaoré) will do anything to retain power. Zongo was interrogated and imprisoned in solitary confinement for three months because of this book. Eventually he was murdered for his investigative work.

Cambodia –  First They Killed My Father   by Loung Ung:  The daughter of a high-ranking government official recounts the Khmer Rouge’s invasion of Phnom Penh and her subsequent years as a child soldier.

Houseboy by Ferdinand Oyono

Canada –  The Blind Assassin   by Margaret Atwood:  A novel within a novel that   spans much of the twentieth century as it explores the life of its protagonist.

Chad –  Told by Starlight in Chad   by Joseph Brahim Seid:  Scenes and stories from the author’s childhood in Chad.

Chile –  Ten Women   by Marcela Serrano:  Nine women connected by their therapist converge to share their disparate life stories.

China –  Empress Orchid   by Anchee Min:  A young concubine seizes the throne to become China’s last empress.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Congo –  Full Circle   by Frederick Yamusangie:  A boy is sent to a rural African village to learn about the way others live.

Cuba –  Farewell to the Sea   by Reinaldo Arenas:  Following the Cuban revolution, a disillusioned poet and his wife visit the seaside and recount their disappointments in life.

Ecuador –  Cumanda   by Juan León Mera:  The son of a missionary whose family was butchered by natives falls in love with a beautiful young indigenous woman.

Egypt –   Palace Walk   by Naguib Mahfouz:  The first in The Cairo Trilogy,  Palace Walk  introduces readers to a despotic patriarch, his oppressed wife, two daughters, and three sons.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

France –  Gigi   by Colette:  The coming of age story of a girl who is true to herself despite being raised in a family and society overly concerned with money and prestige.

Germany –  The Quest for Christa T.   by Christa Wolf:  One of David Bowie’s top 100 books,  The Quest for Christa T.  follows two childhood friends from World War II to the Eastern Bloc in the 1960s.

Ghana –  Changes   by Ama Ata Aidoo:  After divorcing her abusive husband, a woman falls in love with a wealthy married man who asks her to be his second wife.

Guatemala –  The President   by Miguel Ángel Asturias:  A ruthless dictator unscrupulously disposes of his political enemies in an effort to secure his power.

The Dark Child by Camara Laye

Haiti –  Claire of the Sea Light   by Edwidge Danticat:  A young girl disappears after her father makes the painful decision to send her away for a chance at a better life.

India –  The Palace of Illusions   by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni:  In this reimagining of a classic Sanskrit epic, Draupadī aids her five husbands as they try to reclaim their stolen birthright.

Indonesia –  Saman   by Ayu Utami: An exploration of the lives of four sexually liberated female friends and a Catholic priest who becomes the target of sexual advances by two of the women.

Iran –  Reading Lolita in Tehran   by Azar Nafisi:  A memoir about a secret Western literature class the author taught in her home.

Dreaming of Baghdad by Haifa Zangana

Italy –  The Name of the Rose   by Umberto Eco:  Accusations of heresy and seven mysterious deaths prompt Brother William of Baskerville to investigate in fourteenth century Italy.

Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) –  Allah Is Not Obliged   by Ahmadou Kourouma:  A ten-year-old Ivorian boy is orphaned, travels to Liberia to find his aunt, is captured by rebel forces, and forced into child soldiery.

Japan –  Woman on the Other Shore   by Mitsuyo Kakuta:  A friendship develops between a stay-at-home mother and a single, free-spirited career woman.

Kazakhstan –  The Silent Steppe   by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov:  A memoir of the Soviet genocide of the Kazakh nomads in the 1920s and 30s.

The River and the Source by Margaret A. Ogola

Madagascar –  Voices from Madagascar ,  Edited by Jacques Bourgeacq & Liliane Ramarosoa:  An anthology of Malagasy literature in English and French by the likes of Jean–Joseph Rabearivelo, Jacques Rabemananjara, and more.

Malawi –  The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind   by William Kamkwamba:  The true story of a teenage boy who built a windmill from scraps to power his community.

Malaysia –  The Garden of Evening Mists   by Tan Twan Eng:  A Malayan survivor of a Japanese wartime camp retreats to the Cameron Highlands and enlists the help of an exiled Japanese gardener to plant a garden in memory of her sister.

Mali –  The Fortunes of Wangrin   by Amadou Hampaté Bâ:  In early twentieth century Africa, a young man a man with ambiguous morals determines to advance himself.

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

Morocco –  Secret Son   by Laila Lalami:  A boy raised by a single mother in the slums of Casablanca finds out that his father is not only alive, but a wealthy businessman.

Mozambique –  Sleepwalking Land   by Mia Couto:  During the Mozambican Civil War, a young boy and an old man take shelter in a burnt-out bus where they discover the diary of a dead passenger.

Myanmar –  Smile as they Bow   by Nu Nu Yi:  A gay transvestite spiritual medium at the Taungbyon Festival is threatened when his lover/assistant falls for a young beggar girl.

Nepal –  Arresting God in Kathmandu   by Samrat Upadhyay:  A novel that explores the dueling natures of desire and spirituality in the lives of men and women in Nepal’s capital city.

The Dinner by Herman Koch

Niger –  The Epic of Askia Mohammed ,  Recounted by Nouhou Malio:  The story of the most legendary leader of the Songhay Empire who ruled during the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

Nigeria –  Things Fall Apart   by Chinua Achebe:  This modern classic explores Igbo tribal life and the influence of colonialism and Western missionaries through the eyes of a village leader.

North Korea –  In Order to Live   by Yeonmi Park:  The amazing true story of the author’s escape from North Korea.

Pakistan –  I Am Malala   by Malala Yousafzai:  The memoir of the girl who was shot by the Taliban for advocating for girl’s education.

Conversations in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa

Philippines –  State of War   by Ninotchka Rosca:  Three young people try to escape the repression of dictatorship by joining an ancient festival.

Poland –  House of Day, House of Night   by Olga Tokarczuk:  Fictional stories of the lives of residents of Silesia, a region that overlaps parts of Poland, Germany, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.

Romania –  The Land of Green Plums   by Herta Müller:  During Ceaușescu’s dictatorship, a group of young people set out from their provence for the city in hopes of a better future.

Russia –  The Master and the Margarita   by Mikhail Bulgakov:  The devil visits 1930s Soviet Russia in the guise of a mysterious professor.

Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga

Saudi Arabia –  Girls of Riyadh   by Rajaa Alsanea:  Four upper-class young women from Riyadh are exposed to the Western world through travel and school, but are still deeply affected by the oppressive atmosphere in their home country.

Senegal –  So Long a Letter   by Mariama Bâ: In a letter to an old friend, a recently widowed schoolteacher recounts her struggle after her now-deceased husband took a second wife.

Somalia – Links   by Nuruddin Farah:  After returning to Mogadiscio after twenty years, a man is asked to investigate the abduction of the daughter of a close friend.

South Africa –  The Conservationist   by Nadine Gordimer:  A rich man’s wife, son, and mistress leave him, and his farm is devastated by draught and flood.

The Future of Silence: Fiction by Korean Women

South Sudan –  God Grew Tired of Us   by John Bul Dau:  The touching memoir of a “lost boy” of Sudan who walked one thousand miles from his home country to Ethiopia and back again before making the journey to Kenya and finally emigrating to the United States.

Spain –  The Shadow of the Wind   by Carlos Ruiz Zafón:  The son of an antiquarian book dealer finds a mysterious volume by a man named Julián Carax and soon discovers that all remaining copies of the book are being systematically destroyed.

Sri Lanka –  The Legend of Pradeep Mathew   by Shehan Karunatilaka:  Facing liver failure after a lifetime of overindulgence, an aging sportswriter sets out with a friend to find a legendary cricket bowler.

Sudan –  Season of Migration to the North   by Tayeb Salih:  After returning to his home country after years studying in Europe, a young man becomes the confessor of a familiar face from his childhood.

Sabrina by Ulfat Adilbi

Taiwan –  Notes of a Desolate Man   by T’ien-wen Chu:  A gay man ruminates about his life, morality, and Taiwanese society as he watches his childhood friend succumb to AIDS.

Tanzania –  Paradise   by Abdulrazak Gurnah:  A twelve-year-old boy is sold by his father to repay a debt.

Thailand –  Four Reigns   by Kukrit Pramoj:  A young girl is sent to take a position at the royal palace in the hopes of a better life and lives through the reigns of four kings.

Turkey –  My Name Is Red   by Orhan Pamuk:  In sixteenth century Istanbul, the Sultan commissions the Ottoman Empire’s most gifted artisans to create a book celebrating the glory of his reign in the European style, but such art may be seen as an affront to Islam, making it a dangerous task.

Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa

Ukraine –  Wave of Terror   by Theodore Odrach:  A firsthand fictionalized account of the Stalinist occupation of Belarus.

United Kingdom –  White Teeth   by Zadie Smith:  A suicidal World War II veteran gets a second lease on life when he marries a beautiful but toothless Jamaican woman half his age while his friend and fellow vet, a Muslim Bengali, enters into an arranged marriage with a feisty woman.

United States –  To Kill a Mockingbird   by Harper Lee:  Against popular opinion, a lawyer defends a black man who has been accused of raping a white woman in 1930s Alabama.

Uzbekistan –  A Collection of Uzbek Short Stories   by Mahmuda Saydumarova:  A collection of ten stories by Uzbek writers such as Abdulla Qahhar, Ghafur Ghulom, and Sayed Ahmad.

Doña Barbara by Romulo Gallegos

Vietnam –  The Sympathizer   by Viet Thanh Nguyen:  This spy novel set during the Vietnam War just won a Pulitzer [edited] Prize.

Yemen –  I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced   by Nujood Ali:  A brave young girl recounts the horror of being forcibly married, raped, abused, and finally divorced all by the age of ten.

Zambia –  Bitterness   by Malama Katulwende:  Based on real events, this novel explores the tension between tradition and modernity, political struggle, and life in twentieth century Zambia.

Zimbabwe –  Without a Name and Under Tongue   by Yvonne Vera:  A young woman from rural Zimbabwe travels to Harare with hope for a better life, but her dreams are dashed when she becomes pregnant.

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A Vast Journey Through Literary History in “Around the World in 80 Books”

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  • A review of David Damrosch's new book, "Around the World in 80 Books."

review of around the world in 80 books

If there is an academic in America most committed to the idea of literature as a vast, human project, an artistic process of knowing and revealing that spans across social and political boundaries—even historical epochs—it is Harvard University’s David Damrosch. In his latest offering, Around the World in 80 Books , the founder and director of its Institute for World Literature professor and chair of its department of Comparative Literature assumes the role of armchair Phileas Fogg and journeys forth into literary realms to report back to us the fabulous array of storytelling, philosophizing, and religious questing that our species has charted out for itself. Born from Damrosch’s pandemic lockdown, Around the World in 80 Books lifts us up and into locales as diverse as London and Cairo, Venice and Bar Harbor, to highlight 80 works of literature that have helped to fashion our ideas of the world. At the close of his introduction, Damrosch quotes The Golden Ass by Apuleius: “ Lector, intende: laetaberis : Attend, reader, and you will find delight.” Speaking, of course, of the profound riches of world literature he has on display in his book, he could also be speaking of the treasure chest of his own creation housing those gems. I spoke with David Damrosch recently about his new work. 

For more information about Damrosch’s project, go to: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/80books .

review of around the world in 80 books

Ryan Asmussen

Apart from your academic career as a professor of comparative literature, what else in your background do you think prepared you—even prompted you—in the writing of Around the World in 80 Books ?

David Damrosch

A big factor was growing up as the son of parents who’d met in the Philippines in 1940 when my father was an Anglican missionary there. I was born after they returned to the USA when the Korean war broke out, but both my brothers were born there, and I grew up hearing about my parents’ years as a young couple on the other side of the world, and hearing bits of Igorot phrases that my father still liked to use. Then, when I was a teenager, my father had a parish in Manhattan just a few blocks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I fell in love with Egyptian sculptures and reliefs, which led me to learn hieroglyphics in college. So, I grew up with a strong sense of the world beyond America and even Europe.

In your Introduction you write that, prior to the composition of this work, you’d begun thinking about how you “might introduce a broader readership to the expansive landscape of literature.” Could you elaborate a bit on this turn of mind? What caused it?

Partly because I’m a preacher’s kid, I have a very evangelical sense that everyone should be introduced to the literature I love—both for sheer pleasure, and also as a way of opening out our often inward-looking American perspective. But, how to bring unfamiliar works to a general audience? Along with developing a clear and engaging style, I think that the key thing is to find a good narrative frame. For my previous trade book,  The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh , the challenge was to lead readers into an ancient culture they knew nothing about. There, my solution was analogous to an archaeological dig, which starts from the present surface on top, then digs down layer by layer. So, I began in the Victorian era with the epic’s recovery, then chapter by chapter worked backward to its loss in the Assyrian Empire, and further back to Babylon and its first composition.

In a way,  Around the World in 80 Books  was generated simply by its title, not unlike the phrase that came into J.R.R. Tolkien’s mind as he was grading a paper in around 1935, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” He had no idea what a hobbit was, but finding that out led to  The Hobbit  and eventually  The Lord of the Rings . I had the advantage of knowing who Jules Verne was, though I only had distant memories of the movie starring David Niven as Phileas Fogg. I’d never actually read the book. But, the idea of the world-spanning voyage, and the scale of 80 books, seemed just right. Then came COVID-19, with the added impetus to actually write the book in eighty days of work.

For you, as you write in the book, the literary artist works simultaneously in two worlds: the world of her experience and the world of books. Clearly, you’re doing the exact same thing here, and most expertly . What are the blessings as well as pitfalls on this tightrope walk?

To continue the example of Jules Verne, it’s all very well to have a good literary inspiration, but actually writing within the structure the book set up was quite a marathon. Phileas Fogg had his own struggles with everything from delayed sailings to railway breakdowns to murderous bandits, but at least he had long stretches of comparative leisure on ocean liners and luxury trains. For my part, it wasn’t just that I had to write 1600 or so words five days per week for the 16 weeks when I was first drafting the book in its blog form: every day I had to shift gears and discuss an entirely new book. 

On the plus side, I made a point of picking books that were in dialogue with one another, within each chapter and often with their predecessors elsewhere in the book. So works like  The Thousand and One Nights , Voltaire’s  Candide , and Proust’s  Recherche  pointed the way for my journey as much as Phileas Fogg’s train schedules and guidebooks did for him.

You reference Chimamanda Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story,” a talk I’ve often used with high-school students to great effect. Adichie’s point is that we run a great cultural, even ethical, risk as human beings if we restrict our understanding of a person or country to only one story, one perspective. This quarantine project of yours feels like you accepting this football gratefully, as an educator, and running down field with it. In a broadly political sense, are you actively trying to engage readers along these lines?

This seems to me an urgent need today. As Adichie says, literature provides a vital counter to the tendency of political parties—and often of entire nations—to tell a one-sided story about themselves and the world around them. I wrote my  Gilgamesh  book out of distress at the simplistic story of “the clash of civilizations” that became current in the aftermath of 9/11. I wanted to show people that if you go far enough back, we find that Mesopotamia was the cradle of much of Western as well as Middle Eastern culture. So, I wrote that book implicitly in response to 9/11, and the new book is, more explicitly, written to counter the jingoistic ethno-nationalism that we’ve seen on the rise in recent years, from China to Hungary to Brazil to our own country.

If you had to reduce your list of 80 books to a Top Ten, regardless of geography, what titles would remain based solely on global importance?

review of around the world in 80 books

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That’s a tough question! But, if we’re thinking of works with major and ongoing significance for readers and writers today, I’d list (by date of composition):

  • The Bible (of course, here I’m cheating, since that’s really 64 books)
  • Murasaki Shikibu,  The Tale of Genji
  • Dante,  The Divine Comedy
  • The Thousand and One Nights
  • Thomas More,  Utopia
  • Voltaire,  Candide
  • Franz Kafka,  The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
  • James Joyce,  Ulysses
  • Chinua Achebe,  Things Fall Apart
  • Gabriel García Márquez,  One Hundred Years of Solitude

Was there a particular literary culture that was, say, more of a challenge for you, in terms of extracting from it all you wanted, or even expressing your understanding of it?

I’m tempted to say New York, because it’s so various and at the same time I’m too close to it to gain perspective, but probably the answer would be Persia, as it’s such a deep and rich tradition that I don’t know at all well, and in a language I don’t know at all. I would have liked to discuss Rumi, but I don’t feel that I have a good way to talk about his mystical verse, and the epic  Shahnameh , of which I’ve only read brief selections. I’d need a lot more reading in the epic and in Ferdowsi’s world in order to be able to write about it.

Is there a book you ended up not including that you really would have liked to?

So many! Among them, I regret that I didn’t manage to include Lisbon among my sixteen locales. I’d especially have wanted to discuss Fernando Pessoa (of whom there’s now a fascinating just-published biography by Richard Zenith); Pessoa’s amazing  The Book of Disquiet  is in effect his own semi-autobiographical hero’s voyage around his room. 

review of around the world in 80 books

NONFICTION Around the World in 80 Books By David Damrosch Penguin Press Published November 16, 2021

review of around the world in 80 books

RYAN ASMUSSEN is a writer and educator who works as a Visiting Lecturer in English at the University of Illinois at Chicago and writes for Chicago Review of Books and Kirkus Reviews. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, he has published criticism in Creative Nonfiction, The Review Review, and the film journal Kabinet, journalism in Bostonia and other Boston University publications, and fiction in the Harvard Summer Review. His poetry has been published in The Newport Review, The Broad River Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Compass Rose, and Mandala Journal. Twitter: @RyanAsmussen. Website: www.ryanasmussen.com.

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"a safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds." -j.r.r. tolkien, book review: around the world in 80 books.

review of around the world in 80 books

Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch Nonfiction 432 pages Published: November 16, 2021 by Penguin Publishing Group

In January 2020, David Damrosch was developing a plan. He was going to follow in the footsteps of Jules Verne’s legendary hero, Phileas Fogg, and travel around the world and in so doing, reflect on the books he associates with certain locations, and see how literature affects the real world, and vice versa. But when Covid-19 started burning across the world, the restrictions and lockdowns the pandemic brought about ensured that Damrosch wasn’t going to be traveling anywhere for a long time. Instead of sighing in despair and giving up on his round the world journey, though, Damrosch invited readers to follow him on a literary journey, and so for sixteen weeks from May through August 2020, he delved into five books a week, taking his readers to see places and meet people most of them had probably never encountered before– all through the pages of books. Around the World in 80 Books is the result of those literary travels, and invites even more readers to plot a course through the wonders of world literature.

There are probably few American literary luminaries as suited to showcasing the scale and scope of the world’s books as David Damrosch, a Harvard professor of comparative literature and the founder of the Institute for World Literature. He writes as authoritatively about Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway as he does about Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West , and if he’s wrong about Matsuo Bashō’s poetic influences, it seems that one would have to be as informed about seventeenth-century Japanese poetry as Bashō himself to prove Damrosch wrong. And while it would have been easy for Damrosch to look out from an ivory tower and condescend to walk among the masses to talk down to them about the glories of ancient poetry, it feels more like Damrosch is excited about the books he’s discussing and wants everyone else to be excited about them, too. As for genre, he’s not just bringing Very Serious Books About Very Serious Topics to the table. He throws genre fiction into the mix, speaking glowingly of Donna Leon’s Venetian Commissario Brunetti murder mystery series and Tibetan author Jamyang Norbu’s Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes , as well as giving serious consideration to E.B. White’s children’s classic Stuart Little and finishing off his world tour with a beautiful discussion of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings . Everyone is welcome at the table of global literature, and every book is welcome, too.

When opening Around the World in 80 Books for the first time, there are two approaches a reader might take: first, one can devour the entire book in a handful of sittings and take in a smorgasbord of literary offerings all at once; or second, one can slowly sample sections one at a time, getting a taste of this or that and whetting the appetite for more choices down the road. The second one is a little less dizzying in its scope, though however they choose to approach it, the reader would do well to have a pen and paper or preferred book app to hand, as it’s nearly impossible not to find an appealing title that must be added to the endless To Be Read list at every stop along the way.

There is a flock of ” ‘ fill in number here ‘ Books to Read Before You Die” titles out there, but too few of them portray the breadth and depth of the global literary imagination as fully as Around the World in 80 Books . And though this list of eighty books will provide many readers with enough titles to last them a year or more, Damrosch provides even more suggestions in the final pages. His list, after all, is not the One List to Rule Them All. It’s a list of suggestions of great books that are great for different reasons. But its purpose is exactly what the title suggests it is: a round the world trip that takes place in the comfort of your own living room.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group for providing me with a free ebook in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion.

You can purchase Around the World in 80 Books from Barnes and Noble or Bookshop.org

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6 thoughts on “ Book Review: Around the World in 80 Books ”

I’m still debating. I have two book club meeting this week so it will be after I read those!

I love the sound of this book. I think I’d certainly be the kind of reader to take my time with this one. Not sure I’d go so far as to actually read the mentioned books as they’re mentioned, though I am tempted by the idea. Either way, though, I hope to pick this one up at some point. Thanks for the intro to it.

Sounds wonderful. I’d probably take the reading in bits and pieces approach rather than reading straight through, but it does sound like a book I need to read!

I did a bit of both, and I think I had a better time reading it bits at a time. It got a little overwhelming to read big chunks of it, but I was running out of time. I have so many new books on my TBR now!

You’re welcome! I hope you find a lot of new books to try out. I would recommend reading a little at a time. It was much easier to take things in that way.

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Around the World in 80 Books

By david damrosch, by david damrosch read by david damrosch, category: literary criticism | travel | world history, category: literary criticism | travel | world history | audiobooks.

Nov 16, 2021 | ISBN 9780593299883 | 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 --> | ISBN 9780593299883 --> Buy

Nov 16, 2021 | ISBN 9780593299890 | ISBN 9780593299890 --> Buy

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Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch

Nov 16, 2021 | ISBN 9780593299883

Nov 16, 2021 | ISBN 9780593299890

Nov 16, 2021 | ISBN 9780593505045

777 Minutes

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About Around the World in 80 Books

A transporting and illuminating voyage around the globe, through classic and modern literary works that are in conversation with one another and with the world around them *Featured in the Chicago Tribune’ s Great 2021 Fall Book Preview * One of Smithsonian Magazine ‘s Ten Best Books About Travel of 2021* Inspired by Jules Verne’s hero Phileas Fogg, David Damrosch, chair of Harvard University’s department of comparative literature and founder of Harvard’s Institute for World Literature, set out to counter a pandemic’s restrictions on travel by exploring eighty exceptional books from around the globe. Following a literary itinerary from London to Venice, Tehran and points beyond, and via authors from Woolf and Dante to Nobel Prize–winners Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka, Mo Yan, and Olga Tokarczuk, he explores how these works have shaped our idea of the world, and the ways in which the world bleeds into literature.   To chart the expansive landscape of world literature today, Damrosch explores how writers live in two very different worlds: the world of their personal experience and the world of books that have enabled great writers to give shape and meaning to their lives. In his literary cartography, Damrosch includes compelling contemporary works as well as perennial classics, hard-bitten crime fiction as well as haunting works of fantasy, and the formative tales that introduce us as children to the world we’re entering. Taken together, these eighty titles offer us fresh perspective on enduring problems, from the social consequences of epidemics to the rising inequality that Thomas More designed Utopia to combat, as well as the patriarchal structures within and against which many of these books’ heroines have to struggle—from the work of Murasaki Shikibu a millennium ago to Margaret Atwood today.   Around the World in 80 Books is a global invitation to look beyond ourselves and our surroundings, and to see our world and its literature in new ways.

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About david damrosch.

David Damrosch is Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Comparative Literature and chair of comparative literature at Harvard University and director of Harvard’s Institute for World Literature. He is the author or editor of twenty-five books, including What Is World Literature?, The… More about David Damrosch

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“It’s a kind of GPS raisonné that lets readers chart a meaningful path through milestones of literature on multiple continents.“ — Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times “There’s pleasure aplenty in Around the World in 80 Books . . . Mr. Damrosch offers succinct assessments of treasured titles in his library and tempts us to make them our own. Like a tour guide pointing travelers beyond the bus window, he nudges readers to notice parts of the global literary landscape they might have missed . . . Mr. Damrosch pays tribute to Stuart Little , the children’s book by E.B. White. The story of Stuart, a clever mouse who insists on living at human scale, is a fable of sorts about what literature can do. Through their gifts of imagination, the books Mr. Damrosch celebrates allow us, like White’s hero, to be just as large as we need to be.” — Danny Heitman, The Wall Street Journal “Damrosch’s curriculum is encyclopedic but at the same time fondly personal . . . Damrosch sees travel as a mental and moral challenge . . . Around the World in 80 Books takes us on a tour of the author’s global head, and while expanding our knowledge it enlarges our capacity for fellow-feeling.” — Peter Conrad, The Guardian “If there is an academic in America most committed to the idea of literature as a vast, human project, an artistic process of knowing and revealing that spans across social and political boundaries—even historical epochs—it is Harvard University’s David Damrosch . . . Around the World in 80 Books lifts us up and into locales as diverse as London and Cairo, Venice and Bar Harbor . . . [a] treasure chest of his own creation.” — Ryan Asmussen, Chicago Review of Books “Damrosch’s idiosyncratic intellectual itinerary is a gift that will inspire many a book group and inform many readers’ future travels.” — Passport “Damrosch draws together a diverse array of talented authors from all walks of life. They are both widely and lesser known, but all have one key thing in common: Their writing has the ability to transport readers to places near and far without ever needing to leave home.” —Jennifer Nalewicki, Smithsonian Magazine   “[A] wonderful armchair binge in itself.” —Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune “A delightful global guide to literature, as [Damrosch] has expansively interpreted it . . . A year of isolation very well spent.” — Harvard Magazine “A vast, fascinating latticework . . . This rewarding literary Baedeker will inspire readers to discover new places.” — Kirkus   “Damrosch’s richly conceived survey offers readers a colorful map for an illuminating, enlivening tour of their own libraries. Travel fans and literature lovers alike will find something to savor.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Restlessly curious, insightful, and quirky, David Damrosch is the perfect guide to a round-the-world adventure in reading. With such a companion, you never know where you will go next, but you can be confident that the encounter will be memorable. Count me in!” —Stephen Greenblatt, author of Tyrant “It is always a pleasure to talk about books with David Damrosch, who has read all of them, and he is so eloquent about them all.” — Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize-winning novelist   “An insightful journey into the books that have long captivated us. Profound, boundless, and diverse.” — Jokha Alharthi, author of the Man Booker International Prize-winning Celestial Bodies “Pleasurable and full of insights, Around the World in 80 Books is such a joyful journey through the places, times and people who have made our world literature. Every time I finished a chapter I felt an urge to discover or re-read the books whose stories Damrosch is telling so vividly—but that meant putting down his own book and I wasn’t able do that.” — Dror Mishani, author of The Missing File and Three Praise for David Damrosch: “David Damrosch’s The Buried Book is a remarkably original, narrative analysis of the loss, rediscovery, and literary-spiritual values of the ancient epic, Gilgamesh. There is somber wisdom and wit in Damrosch’s comprehensive story, which finds room for Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel and the murderous fictions of Saddam Hussein. It is salutary to be reminded by Damrosch that ultimately we and Islam share a common literary culture that commenced with Gilgamesh .” — Harold Bloom, author of The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of the Ages “A stunning achievement. Damrosch gives ‘world literature’ the largest possible scope—ranging from cuneiform to hieroglyphics, from low German to Nahuatl—a jaunt across several millennia and a dozen languages.” — Wai Chee Dimock, Yale University “An influential leader in the field, Damrosch capaciously tells the story of its evolution, representing sharp debates on contentious issues such as language, translation, Eurocentrism, postcolonial studies, and world literature with a compelling judiciousness.” — Susan Stanford Friedman, University of Wisconsin-Madison “Displaying great intelligence, immense literary and historical culture, and unassuming modesty, Damrosch intervenes in contemporary debates over ‘world literature.’ Readers will be dumbfounded by his range. He treats cuneiform-inscribed shards, Egyptian hieroglyphics, medieval German female mystics, Inca chronicles, Kafka translations and contemporary Native protest literature will equal philological attention, poise and erudition.” — Wlad Godzich, University of California, Santa Cruz

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A transporting and illuminating voyage around the globe, through classic and modern literary works that are in conversation with one another and with the world around them.

Inspired by Jules Verne’s hero, Phileas Fogg, David Damrosch --- chair of Harvard University’s department of comparative literature and founder of Harvard’s Institute for World Literature --- set out to counter a pandemic’s restrictions on travel by exploring 80 exceptional books from around the globe. Following a literary itinerary from London to Venice, Tehran and points beyond, and via authors from Woolf and Dante to Nobel Prize winners Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka, Mo Yan and Olga Tokarczuk, he explores how these works have shaped our idea of the world, and the ways in which the world bleeds into literature.   To chart the expansive landscape of world literature today, Damrosch explores how writers live in two very different worlds: the world of their personal experience and the world of books that have enabled great writers to give shape and meaning to their lives. In his literary cartography, Damrosch includes compelling contemporary works as well as perennial classics, hard-bitten crime fiction as well as haunting works of fantasy, and the formative tales that introduce us as children to the world we’re entering.

Taken together, these 80 titles offer us fresh perspective on enduring problems, from the social consequences of epidemics to the rising inequality that Thomas More designed Utopia to combat, as well as the patriarchal structures within and against which many of these books’ heroines have to struggle --- from the work of Murasaki Shikibu a millennium ago to Margaret Atwood today.   AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BOOKS is a global invitation to look beyond ourselves and our surroundings, and to see our world and its literature in new ways.

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review of around the world in 80 books

Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch

  • Publication Date: November 16, 2021
  • Genres: Literary Criticism , Nonfiction , Travel
  • Hardcover: 432 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Press
  • ISBN-10: 0593299884
  • ISBN-13: 9780593299883

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As we shelter in place in these troubled times, or when we return home after a socially distanced excursion out, we can use antidotes to the closing in of the walls around us. literature has always provided windows into the wider world, and i’ve found myself more than ever drawn to reading writers from around the world, people who have transformed their own traumas and their society’s struggles into brilliantly achieved works of art. with a whole series of travel plans cancelled for this past year,, i decided in the summer of 2020 to follow the lead of jules verne’s, globe-spanning hero phileas fogg, in my case voyaging around the world not in, person but through eighty books., during 16 weeks from may-august 2020, this website chronicled my travels, through classic and contemporary world literature, offering readers worldwide , the chance to look freshly at some much-loved works and to make new discoveries, in their company. since then, i've revised the original blog postings, and have converted weeks into chapters. the book has now come out from pelican book s in the uk and penguin in the usa..

Each chapter's set of five works is associated with a city or region that they’ve embodied in memorable form. The book, like the 80 Books blog before it, highlights the way these works reflect or refract their world and the way they enter into the world in turn. I invite you to join me on the journey.

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About the Author

David damrosch is the chair of harvard’s department of comparative literature and the founder of harvard’s institute for world literature. he is the author or editor of twenty-five books, including what is world literature, the buried book: the loss and recovery of the great epic of gilgamesh , and most recently comparing the literatures: literary studies for a global age (2020). he has given several hundred talks in fifty countries around theworld, and his work has been translated into arabic, chinese, danish, estonian, french, german, hungarian, japanese, persian, polish, romanian, spanish, turkish, tibetan, and vietnamese. his own translation of a francophone congolese novel, georges ngal’s giambattista viko: or the rape of african discourse , will be published next year..

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Around the World in 80 Books

by David Damrosch

Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch

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Published Nov 2021 432 pages Genre: Travel & Adventure Publication Information

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A transporting and illuminating voyage around the globe, through classic and modern literary works that are in conversation with one another and with the world around them.

Inspired by Jules Verne's hero Phileas Fogg, David Damrosch, chair of Harvard University's department of comparative literature and founder of Harvard's Institute for World Literature, set out to counter a pandemic's restrictions on travel by exploring eighty exceptional books from around the globe. Following a literary itinerary from London to Venice, Tehran and points beyond, and via authors from Woolf and Dante to Nobel Prize–winners Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka, Mo Yan, and Olga Tokarczuk, he explores how these works have shaped our idea of the world, and the ways in which the world bleeds into literature. To chart the expansive landscape of world literature today, Damrosch explores how writers live in two very different worlds: the world of their personal experience and the world of books that have enabled great writers to give shape and meaning to their lives. In his literary cartography, Damrosch includes compelling contemporary works as well as perennial classics, hard-bitten crime fiction as well as haunting works of fantasy, and the formative tales that introduce us as children to the world we're entering. Taken together, these eighty titles offer us fresh perspective on enduring problems, from the social consequences of epidemics to the rising inequality that Thomas More designed Utopia to combat, as well as the patriarchal structures within and against which many of these books' heroines have to struggle—from the work of Murasaki Shikibu a millennium ago to Margaret Atwood today. Around the World in 80 Books is a global invitation to look beyond ourselves and our surroundings, and to see our world and its literature in new ways.

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"[A]n enlightening tour of global literature...Damrosch's richly conceived survey offers readers a colorful map for an illuminating, enlivening tour of their own libraries. Travel fans and literature lovers alike will find something to savor." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) "As he moves along, delving into plots, characters, and themes, and both prose and poetry, over centuries, he creates a vast, fascinating latticework of books within books...This rewarding literary Baedeker will inspire readers to discover new places." - Kirkus Reviews "Restlessly curious, insightful, and quirky, David Damrosch is the perfect guide to a round-the-world adventure in reading. With such a companion, you never know where you will go next, but you can be confident that the encounter will be memorable. Count me in!" - Stephen Greenblatt, author of Tyrant "It is always a pleasure to talk about books with David Damrosch, who has read all of them, and he is so eloquent about them all." - Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize-winning novelist "An insightful journey into the books that have long captivated us. Profound, boundless, and diverse." - Jokha Alharthi, author of the Man Booker International Prize-winning Celestial Bodies

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David damrosch.

David Damrosch is Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Comparative Literature and chair of comparative literature at Harvard University and director of Harvard's Institute for World Literature. He is the author or editor of twenty-five books, including What Is World Literature? , The Buried Book , Comparing the Literatures , and the six-volume Longman Anthology of World Literature . He has lectured in fifty countries around the world, and his online Harvard course Masterpieces of World Literature has been taken by nearly 100,000 people.

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Jules verne , brian w. aldiss  ( introduction ) , michael glencross  ( translator, annotations ).

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First published November 6, 1872

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THE GUEST BOOK, by Sarah Blake. (Flatiron, 512 pp., $17.99.) “Welcome to old money, new heartbreak, big secrets and the kind of mouthwatering picnics nobody packs in real life,” was how Elisabeth Egan began her review of this novel set on the Maine island where the Milton family summers. After a tragedy Egan “did not see coming,” a granddaughter makes a shocking discovery.

COVENTRY: Essays, by Rachel Cusk. (Picador, 256 pp., $17.) Having completed her self-imposed exile from autobiographical writing, Cusk is back with personal essays that verge on the political, and “rigorous and uncompromising” cultural criticism. “Like the best artists,” our reviewer, Meghan O’Gieblyn, proclaimed, she has succeeded in “transforming her private crises into an expansive aesthetic vision.”

THE SECOND FOUNDING: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, by Eric Foner. (Norton, 304 pp., $17.95.) In this “disciplined, powerful and moving” work of scholarship — according to our reviewer, Lincoln Caplan — Foner makes “a surprisingly optimistic argument”: that the Civil War era’s “most tangible legacies” are the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, each “with a clause empowering Congress to enforce their provisions, guaranteeing that Reconstruction would be an ongoing process” continuing through the present day.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 TREES, by Jonathan Drori. Illustrations by Lucille Clerc. (Laurence King, 240 pp., $19.99.) Our reviewer, Dominique Browning, called this study of “the ways humans and trees interact,” by a former trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens, “exquisite.”

THE TRUTHS WE HOLD: An American Journey, by Kamala Harris. (Penguin, 336 pp., $18.) The second Black woman elected to the United States Senate explores “the core truths that unite us” in this memoir ranging from her childhood as the daughter of immigrant, civil-rights-activist parents, to her law career, to her questioning of Judge Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

MARILOU IS EVERYWHERE, by Sarah Elaine Smith. (Riverhead, 288 pp., $17.) When the befuddled alcoholic mother of a popular teenage girl who disappeared mistakes another girl for her daughter, the “hungry” loner Cindy starts to dress and pose as the missing girl. “Brimming with longing,” this “strange and powerful” debut novel, in the words of our reviewer, Rachel Khong, is “a coming-of-age by coming into somebody else.”

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review of around the world in 80 books

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne a Review

The Extraordinary Journeys: Around the World in Eighty Days (Oxford World's Classics)

You may or may not know this, but Jules Verne is one of the grandfathers of science fiction! HG Wells is the other granddaddy.

It took me a while to warm up to the science fiction. Now I feel more comfortable reading science novels.

If you're new to science fiction, Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne could be your introduction to the genre.

In a hurry to get started? CLICK HERE to grab your personal copy of Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne from Amazon !

Below, you'll find my book review and summary of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days!

All images in this post are clickable! 

Seven Key Lessons from  Around the World in Eighty Days  by Jules Verne

  •  Be flexible.
  • Be careful who you take into your confidence – loose lips sink ships.
  • The best laid plans fall apart so have a Plan B.
  • Even the most fastidious person makes mistakes.
  • Believe in yourself.
  • Take chances in life and don’t always play it safe.
  • Life is never just about you.

Who Was Jules Verne?

Initial Thoughts on Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne is set in the 1870s and is a book of contradictions ( Review of Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne ). Phileas Fogg appears mysterious to others because they really do not know much about him.

He is a man of few words, but when he speaks, his words count. People do not know where he is from, or anything about his family. They can tell that he is a man of means, yet he doesn’t employ much help in his household, which helps to stem the gossip about him. Around the World in Eighty days is a hero's journey.

Phileas Fogg is called to take a trip around the world and complete it in a short time span. The main theme of the story is traveling around the globe in just 80 days, and it is also about perseverance.

Have you read?

Review of  Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

Self-Mentoring Strategy

To get the most from this SummaReview of  Around the World in Eighty Days  by Jules Verne , after you have read the book review/summary, reflectively answer the following questions:

  • What can you learn from the ideas in the SummaReview?
  • What is one action that you can take as a result of reading this  SummaReview ?
  • What are five takeaways from the  SummaReview ?
  • What has made an impression on you while reading?
  • Is there a framework that you can use in your life and work?
  • How do the concepts in the SummaReview relate to what you already know?
  • How can you combine key ideas from the profile with what you already know to create a new idea?
  • Is this a book you’d like to read for yourself? Why? Why not?

An ilustration from the novel "Around the...

What is Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne About?

Fogg knows a lot about the world, information that only one well travelled would know, and is often correcting others, yet no one can ever remember a time when he wasn’t around. No one remembers him taking a trip for any length of time. Fogg is also very set in his ways – he leaves his home the same time every day and returns the same time every night and takes the same number of steps to and from.

When he leaves he goes to the Reform Club to have his meals. Fogg always sits at the same table in the same room, and eats alone. He also enjoys a good game of whist and reading the paper. He is so set in his ways, that he fires his manservant because the water he uses to shave was 84 degrees Fahrenheit instead of 86.

Although Phileas Fogg is very set in his ways, he is also charitable, giving money to the poor.

Upon a recommendation, Fogg employs Jean Passepartout to be his new manservant. Passepartout is ready for a change and believes working for Fogg is exactly what he is looking for – he wants predictability and sameness. When he looks at the schedule for his daily work, he is very contented and believes he has landed in the perfect job. Passepartout is French, but left his homeland a few years before. In a previous life, he was a gymnast.

The same day Fogg hires Passepartout life changes for both of them. While playing whist at the Reform Club with his regular partners – Andrew Stuart, an engineer; John Sullivan and Samuel Fallentin, bankers; Thomas Flanagan, a brewer; and Gauthier Ralph, one of the directors of the Bank of England – they have a conversation about a bank robbery of 55,000 pounds at the Bank of England. In those days, they did not have the kind of security we have today and to hear the description, what they actually had was no security. The money was taken from the principal cashier’s table.

During the conversation, they try to figure out who the bank robber could be. Fogg mentions that the world is no longer as big as it was. So of course there is a question about what he means by that. Stuart tries to explain how the world is smaller, and postulates that you can travel around the world in three months. Fogg interjects saying that it’s only eighty days, and John Sullivan agrees with him and proceeds to give them the breakdown which was in the Daily Telegraph:

Breakdown of 80-Day Trip: Mapping Fogg's Trip Around the World in Eighty Days

Stuart exclaims that the time doesn’t take into account bad weather, shipwrecks, contrary winds, railways accidents and other events likely to delay a trip. Phileas Fogg tells them that all of those eventualities are included in the time, and during the time the conversation is going on, he calmly plays whist when it is his turn. The events that the others mention that would likely lengthen a trip around the world, Fogg calmly responds that all those events are included in the 80 days.

Phileas Fogg takes up the challenge to travel around the world in 80 days. He bets 20,000 pounds that he can do it. They accept the bet and Fogg decides to leave that very night. The deal is that Phileas Fogg leaves Wednesday, October 2 nd and return Saturday, December 21 st at 9 pm at the Reform Club. He hands them a cheque for 20,000 pounds, which they will cash if the trip takes more than 80 days. They sign a memorandum of the agreement and now the wager is legal.

He gets home much earlier than his schedule says and that upsets Passepartout, who is looking for predictability. When Fogg informs his manservant about the trip, Passepartout is “overcome with stupefied astonishment.”

Fogg has 40,000 pounds, which is a very large sum in the 1870s. He has wagered half and will use the other half for the trip. He decides to travel light, buying what he and Passepartout need on the way. Fogg makes sure that he takes a copy of Bradshaw’s Continental Railway Steam Transit and General Guide, which has a timetable of the departures and arrivals of steamers and railways.

Around The World In 80 Days Video

(This film adaptation is very different from the book.)

The 80-Day Trip Begins

around the world in 80 days,around world 80 days book,Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne,Around the World in Eighty Days

His five friends from the Reform Club see them off on their journey around the world in eighty days. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne is a page turner, and although the author is a pioneer in science fiction, this book captivates the reader, and he disperses history bites throughout the book.

After Fogg leaves London, there is much talk about the wager to travel the world in eighty days, and the newspapers – The Times, Standard, Morning Post, Daily News and 20 other respected newspapers – get caught up in the hype. They think Fogg is mad, except for The Daily Telegraph, which is his sole media supporter. People start to take bets as to whether or not Fogg can complete the journey in the specified timeframe. The bets are against Fogg, 100 and 150 to one.

The Commissioner of Police becomes very suspicious of Fogg. He thinks Fogg is the bank robber and intends to escape by going on the trip. They dispatch Detective Fix to go after Fogg. This is a fantastic book with so many lessons. Early on in the book, we see Fogg as a very inflexible person, but is that who he is? Or is he someone who believes in himself?

Whenever he encounters a challenge he calmly finds a solution because he is determined to win the wager. When he misses one of the steamers along the way, he finds another way to reach his destination, and is able to do so because he has the means.

Fogg keeps meticulous notes on his travel, and makes sure that he gets a visa stamped into his passport even when he doesn’t need to because he wants indisputable proof that he has completed his journey.

When the train they are travelling on in India runs out of track because the railway is not completed, he buys an elephant, Kiouni, and hires a Parsee as a guide. Although it can be dangerous, the guide takes them on a route that’s hidden – through the Indian forest. On their way, they encounter some Brahmins who are on their way to give a human sacrifice to the goddess Kali – the Goddess of love and death.

The guide informs them that it’s an unwilling sacrifice and tells them about Aouda, the young woman who is being sacrificed. At this point in his journey, Fogg is ahead of schedule due to a steamer taking less time than anticipated. Fogg and his group stage a rescue to get Aouda, and Passepartout’s days as a gymnast come in very handy.

When Aouda recovers from the influence of opiates she was exposed to she is able to talk to them and Fogg learns that she has a well-to-do relative in Hong Kong. He thinks that’s the best thing for her is to take her to Hong Kong since staying in India may cause the Brahmins to kidnap her again to use as a human sacrifice. When they arrive in Hong Kong they learn that Aouda’s relative no longer lives there and probably lives in Holland so, Fogg decides to take the young woman with him on his journey.

You see Auoda falling in love with her protector, but it appears that Fogg is quite unaware. He appears to people to have a heart of stone. Along the journey Detective Fix befriends Passepartout and the manservant has loose lips. Ever heard of the phrase, “loose lips sink ships?” He gives Fix too much information even though the detective initially doesn’t disclose his identity. Even when Fix tells Passepartout that he is a detective, and that he believes that Fogg is the bank robber, the manservant doesn’t believe it for a second, yet he doesn’t tell his master.

Fix does many things to undermine Fogg on his trip. When they backfire, he decides to support the adventurer until he gets back on British soil, so that he can arrest him. Fogg is an honourable man, and the reader sees that time and time again. When the train they are on from San Francisco is attacked by Indians, and Passepartout is taken away with a couple of other passengers, Fogg goes after them, and he rescues them.

He is willing to try new things. When the train leaves them because it’s on a schedule and cannot wait for him to find the kidnapped passengers, when Fogg returns, he is willing to ride on a sledge at the suggestion of Fix. That is the only way to reach New York in time to get back to England before December 21 st .

When they arrive on British soil, Fix arrests Fogg for being a bank robber. Fogg he sees his last 20,000 pounds disappearing before his eyes. Hours later, Fix returns after discovering that the real bank robber was captured a few days before. The usually calm Fogg punches the detective.

Fogg, Passepartout and Aouda go to his residence in London. He is quite sad because he has lost the bet and no longer has any money. Auoda says she will marry him, and he accepts because he is in love with her. Fogg sends Passepartout for the Reverend Samuel Wilson to marry them the next day, which is Monday, but the place is closed.

It turns out that because of the route they took to travel the world in 80 days, going east to west, they gained a day, which they hadn’t accounted for, so Fogg is able to get to the Reform Club on time after all.

Should You Buy Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne?

I recommend Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. The book is a page turner, and any reader who loves a good story will enjoy reading it. Just to recap, here are seven lessons that you'll learn.

review of around the world in 80 books

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Documentary: Prophets of Science Fiction – Episode 6 – Jules Verne

About the Author  Avil Beckford

Hello there! I am Avil Beckford, the founder of The Invisible Mentor. I am also a published author, writer, expert interviewer host of The One Problem Podcast and MoreReads Success Blueprint, a movement to help participants learn in-demand skills for future jobs. Sign-up for MoreReads: Blueprint to Change the World today! In the meantime, Please support me by buying my e-books Visit My Shop , and thank you for connecting with me on LinkedIn , Facebook , Twitter and Pinterest !

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AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY GAMES

From tarot to tic-tac-toe, catan to chutes and ladders, a mathematician unlocks the secrets of the world's greatest games.

by Marcus Du Sautoy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 2023

A complex package delivered in refreshingly simple and consistently entertaining terms.

According to one of the world’s most respected mathematicians, the games we play have made us who we are.

Du Sautoy, an Oxford academic and author of The Music of the Primes , Symmetry , How To Count to Infinity , and other acclaimed works, admits to a fascination with games. When he has travelled to attend conferences and meetings around the world, he has tried to find out how the locals amuse themselves. In his latest book, the author examines the mechanics and history of each game (he does not include sports) as well as the underlying math. “Tell me the game you play,” he writes, “and I’ll tell you who you are.” While he has great affection for rational, strategic games like chess, his main interest is games that require both skill and luck. The games that have endured are those with simple rules that give rise to near-infinite complexity. Some games, like backgammon and bridge, transcend national borders, while others, such as mancala (mostly in Africa) and truco (South America) are played mainly in their culture of origin. The author acknowledges that his list is somewhat arbitrary, but he thoroughly knows his subject, and he writes with self-effacing charm. He discusses the odds that apply to dice games, cards, and even roulette, although he emphasizes that the most that math study can give you is a slight edge, not an unbeatable advantage. In fact, many regular game players have an intuitive grasp of the odds, which leads du Sautoy to speculate that games played a crucial part in the brain development of early humans. “Both games and mathematics combine the creativity and imagination of the artist with the logic and practicality of the scientist,” he writes, adding that “we will keep on inventing new games”—a fitting conclusion to an engrossing tour.

Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023

ISBN: 9781541601284

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Basic Books

Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023

HISTORY | SPORTS & RECREATION | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | WORLD | GENERAL NONFICTION

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IndieBound Bestseller

A WEALTH OF PIGEONS

A cartoon collection.

by Steve Martin illustrated by Harry Bliss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2020

A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.

The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.

Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker . So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny .” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.

Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Celadon Books

Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020

ART & PHOTOGRAPHY | GENERAL NONFICTION | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY

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ELON MUSK

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New York Times Bestseller

by Walter Isaacson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2023

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.

To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023

ISBN: 9781982181284

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | POLITICS

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Around the World in 80 Books

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Excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved..

Chapter one

London: Inventing a City

1. Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway After making his round-the-world wager with his friends at the Reform Club, Phileas Fogg strides to his home at 7 Savile Row, several blocks away, to collect some clothes and his newly hired French servant, Jean Passepartout. Halfway there, he crosses the route that would be taken by Clarissa Dalloway fifty years later (had she, or he, actually existed), on her way to nearby Bond Street to buy flowers for her party that evening. Woolf begins her novel with Clarissa's meditative stroll, which becomes a kind of hymn to the joys of London:

Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.

Mrs. Dalloway is one of the most localized of books, taking place on a single day in June 1923 within a few fashionable neighborhoods of central London. It might have seemed more logical to begin our journey with Woolf's picaresque, uncanny Orlando, whose hero has an affair with a Russian princess before changing sex in Constantinople and becoming the book's heroine. Or with the globe-spanning Joseph Conrad, with novels set in Malaysia and Latin America, whose Heart of Darkness takes us from London to the Belgian Congo and back again. Yet I've preferred to begin with a novel set squarely in London, not only because this is our point of departure but because Mrs. Dalloway shows London becoming the world city it is today. Clarissa's former suitor, Peter Walsh, has returned from India in order to arrange a divorce; her daughter's tutor and possible lover, Miss Kilman, feels radically out of place in an England that only recently was locked in a life-or-death struggle with her native Germany; and the Italian war bride Rezia struggles to adapt to London life and to rescue her shell-shocked husband, Septimus Warren Smith, from the brink of suicide.

The world has certainly come home to London, most ominously in the form of World War I, whose aftershocks resonate throughout the city and through the novel. Even as Clarissa enjoys "life; London; this moment of June," she also hears "the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead." This turns out to be a sky-writing biplane advertising a product that people on the ground try to make out (toffee? Glaxo milk powder?). Yet the plane's approach seems oddly like an air raid, its effects almost fatal:

Suddenly Mrs. Coates looked up into the sky. The sound of an aeroplane bored ominously into the ears of the crowd. There it was coming over the trees, letting out white smoke from behind, which curled and twisted . . . Dropping dead down the aeroplane soared straight up, curved in a loop, raced, sank, rose . . . and again, in a fresh space of sky, began writing a K, an E, a Y perhaps?

"Glaxo," said Mrs. Coates in a strained, awe-stricken voice, gazing straight up, and her baby, lying stiff and white in her arms, gazed straight up. (20)

Sky-writing had actually been invented that year by the aptly named Major Jack Savage, recently retired from the Royal Air Force; he wrote his aerial advertisements using airplanes decommissioned from the RAF after the war's end.

Mrs. Dalloway is haunted by the chaos that lies just outside the comfortable boundaries of Clarissa's upper-class environment. Anything at all can shake the foundations of a still fragile postwar world. As the biplane flies overhead, a curtained limousine glides along Bond Street, causing a stir of excitement, though no one can see who is inside the car as it heads to Buckingham Palace. Its discreet glamour stirs patriotic sentiments in prosperous gentlemen and an impoverished flower-seller, but also thoughts of loss and even a near-riot: in all the hat shops and tailors' shops strangers looked at each other and thought of the dead; of the flag; of Empire. In a public house in a back street a Colonial insulted the House of Windsor which led to words, broken beer glasses, and a general shindy, which echoed strangely across the way in the ears of girls buying white underlinen threaded with pure white ribbon for their weddings. For the surface agitation of the passing car as it sunk grazed something very profound. (18)

A few blocks away in Regent's Park, worried sick about her husband's erratic behavior, Rezia senses England's entire civilization dropping away, leaving her in a primeval wasteland:

"For you should see the Milan gardens," she said aloud. But to whom?

There was nobody. Her words faded. So a rocket fades. Its sparks, having grazed their way into the night, surrender to it, dark descends, pours over the outlines of houses and towers; bleak hillsides soften and fall in . . . as perhaps at midnight, when all boundaries are lost, the country reverts to its ancient shape, as the Romans saw it, lying cloudy, when they landed, and the hills had no names and rivers wound they knew not where-such was her darkness . . . (23-4)

In Heart of Darkness , Conrad's hero, Marlow, had already compared the European scramble for Africa with the Roman conquest of a dank and primitive England: "marshes, forests, savages,-precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink." Woolf brings the comparison home. Amid all of Clarissa's upper-class comforts (the irises and delphiniums, the dove-grey gloves, the Prime Minister dropping by her party) her London bears more than a passing resemblance to Conrad's heart of darkness. Even Mr. Kurtz's famous last words-"The horror! The horror!"-are echoed in a mounting crescendo in the novel's opening pages. First, Clarissa recalls "the horror of the moment" when she learned of Peter Walsh's impending marriage; then the shell-shocked Septimus feels "as if some horror had come almost to the surface and was about to burst into flames," and finally nineteen-year-old Maisie Johnson, newly arrived from Scotland seeking employment, is disturbed by Septimus's behavior, and she wishes she'd never come to town: "Horror! horror! she wanted to cry. (She had left her people; they had warned her what would happen.) Why hadn't she stayed at home? she cried, twisting the knob of the iron railing" (8, 15, 27).

Virginia Woolf was a lifelong Londoner, but she was also a citizen of a wider literary world. She was studying Russian when she began work on the novel, and she read Sophocles and Euripides in Greek as she finished it. She also took a close, quizzical interest in foreign-born writers on the English scene, including Conrad, Henry James, and her friend T. S. Eliot. In her essay collection The Common Reader (published in the same year as Mrs. Dalloway ) she wrote that "instances will occur to everybody of American writers in particular who have written with the highest discrimination of our literature and of ourselves; who have lived a lifetime among us, and finally have taken legal steps to become subjects of King George. For all that, have they understood us, have they not remained to the end of their days foreigners?"

A feminist, a socialist, and a pacifist in a largely patriarchal, capitalist, and imperialist England, Woolf herself often felt like a foreigner at home. A slyly subversive streak, though, ran through her commitment to pacifist anti-imperialism. In 1910 she donned a cross-dressing disguise to join her brother Adrian and several friends in an Ethiopian "state visit" to the warship HMS Dreadnought , anchored in Portsmouth (Figure 1). The visitors were welcomed with an honor guard and given a tour of the ship; they expressed their admiration with cries of "Bunga! Bunga!" Conversing in a gibberish made up of Latin and Greek, they bestowed bogus military honors on the clueless officers and returned to London unexposed. The Royal Navy was deeply embarrassed when the friends published an account of the hoax, complete with a formal photo of the delegation, in the London Daily Mirror . (Woolf is the hirsute gentleman on the left.)

The foreign and the familiar constantly intermingle in Woolf's work. In The Common Reader , she describes the disorienting strangeness of Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, yet she drew deeply on their work to find resources not available to her in Victorian fiction. Her description of Chekhov's stories could be an account of Mrs. Dalloway itself: "Once the eye is used to these shades, half the 'conclusions' of fiction fade into thin air; they show like transparencies with a light behind them-gaudy, glaring, superficial . . . In consequence, as we read these little stories about nothing at all, the horizon widens; the soul gains an astonishing sense of freedom" (186). Mrs. Dalloway is imbued as well with Woolf's admiration for Proust ("My great adventure is really Proust. Well-what remains to be written after that?"). She was more ambivalent about Joyce's Ulysses , which she described in print as "a memorable catastrophe" and in private as "merely the scratching of pimples" on a hotel's bootboy. Devising her own version of Joyce's stream-of-consciousness technique, and like him adapting the ancient Greek unities of time and place for her novel, Woolf draws on Sophocles and Euripides as well as on Chekhov, Conrad, Eliot, Joyce, and Proust.

Yet her London isn't the "unreal city" of Eliot's Waste Land but an intensely present world. Woolf's shifting, glancing sentences emphasize nuance and openness to experience, not the imposing mastery of her male counterparts. As she wrote in her great essay A Room of One's Own , in most men's writing "a shadow shaped something like the letter 'I' often falls across their pages." As Clarissa walks to Bond Street to buy her flowers, she reflects that "her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct" (9). She loves London's "hosts of people; and dancing all night; and the wagons plodding past to market . . . what she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab" (9). No one has ever surpassed Woolf's ability to create scenes in which the most serious concerns-world war, madness, the unbridgeable gaps between men and women-emerge from "this, here, now."

Yet Woolf shows us the here and now on the threshold of death, and she sees London almost with an archaeologist's eye. When the curtained limousine glides down Bond Street

there could be no doubt that greatness was seated within . . . the enduring symbol of the state which will be known to curious antiquaries, sifting the ruins of time, when London is a grass-grown path and all those hurrying along the pavement this Wednesday morning are but bones with a few wedding rings mixed up in their dust and the gold stoppings of innumerable decayed teeth. The face in the motor car will then be known. (16)

Woolf's panoramic framing of her local scenes fueled the book's circulation out into the world, embraced by readers around the globe who wouldn't be able to locate Bond Street or even London on a map. In 1998, in The Hours -Woolf's original title-Michael Cunningham set the story in Los Angeles and Greenwich Village. Writing on a different continent and for a new generation, Cunningham expanded on the theme of same-sex desire that Woolf had only hinted at in the troubled figure of Miss Kilman and in Clarissa's early crush on the free-spirited Sally Seton, whose ardent kiss she vividly recalls decades later. But Woolf's subtly subversive book was never confined to its immediate time and place. The most local of novels, Mrs. Dalloway is also one of the most worldly books ever written: a long day's journey into life; London; this moment of June.

2. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

In "David Copperfield," an essay she published the same year as Mrs. Dalloway , Virginia Woolf tried to come to terms with her lifelong ambivalence toward Dickens's work. In place of the intricacies of human emotions, she says, what we remember from his novels

is the ardour, the excitement, the humour, the oddity of people's characters; the smell and savour and soot of London; the incredible coincidences which hook the most remote lives together; the city, the law courts, this man's nose, that man's limp; some scene under an archway or on the high road; and above all some gigantic and dominating figure, so stuffed and swollen with life that he does not exist singly, but seems to need for his own realization a host of others.

She remarks that "there is perhaps no person living who can remember reading David Copperfield for the first time" (75). Dickens wasn't really an author any more, she says, but "an institution, a monument, a public thoroughfare trodden dusty by a million feet" (76)-probably trodden simultaneously by the host of his characters and by his millions of readers.

Few writers and their cities have ever been so closely linked as Dickens and London. To this day, a host of guidebooks and websites invite you to take walking tours through "Dickens's London." Dozens of locales are on view, including the Old Curiosity Shop at the center of the novel of that name, now "immortalized by Charles Dickens," as the façade proudly declares in faux-Gothic lettering. Certainly in my own case, long before I ever got there, the London of my early imagination was largely Dickens's creation, in a literary embodiment of Oscar Wilde's claim that London's fogs had actually been invented by the Impressionists. As he asked in his brilliant essay "The Decay of Lying": "Where, if not from the Impressionists, do we get those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas-lamps and changing the houses into monstrous shadows?" He allows that "there may have been fogs for centuries in London. I dare say there were. But no one saw them . . . They did not exist until Art had invented them." Wilde, however, wouldn't have joined a Dickens tour, as he was put off by Dickens's sentimentality. As he famously declared about The Old Curiosity Shop 's tragic little heroine, "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing."

Virginia Woolf too wasn't content to live in Dickens's London, as she and her friends were intent on inventing a city-and a mode of writing-more to their liking. As she notes with some asperity in her essay on David Copperfield , "His sympathies, indeed, have strict limitations. Speaking roughly, they fail him whenever a man or woman has more than two thousand a year, has been to the university, or can count his ancestors back to the third generation" (77), and she misses the emotional complexity that was foregrounded in the work of George Eliot and Henry James. At the same time, she sees in Dickens the seeds of the active readerly involvement that she was seeking to create on her own terms. Dickens's "fecundity and apparent irreflectiveness," she says, "have a strange effect. They make creators of us, and not merely readers and spectators . . . Subtlety and complexity are all there if we know where to look for them, if we can get over the surprise of finding them-as it seems to us, who have another convention in these matters-in the wrong places" (78-9).

  • Print length 432 pages
  • Language English
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  • Publisher Penguin Press
  • Publication date November 16, 2021
  • File size 93148 KB
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Around the World in 80 Novels: A global journey inspired by writers from every continent

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  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0936LKVKF
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Press (November 16, 2021)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 16, 2021
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 93148 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
  • #55 in Literary Travel
  • #322 in Literary & Religious Travel Guides
  • #1,263 in Travel (Kindle Store)

About the author

review of around the world in 80 books

David Damrosch

David Damrosch was born in Maine and raised there and in New York. He studied at Yale, where he pursued interests in a wide range of ancient and modern languages and literatures. He then taught for three decades at Columbia before moving in 2009 to Harvard, where he chairs the Department of Comparative Literature. A past president of the American Comparative Literature Association, he has written widely on comparative and world literature, and his work has been translated into an eclectic variety of languages, including Chinese, Estonian, Hungarian, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

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Word of Mouth

Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, around the world in 80 books.

review of around the world in 80 books

I have always been enamored by books about books. I still recall my visit to one of America’s finest independent bookstores, Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee. While talking to a salesperson there, I was reminded that people come to bookstores for two reasons: for the book they want to buy, and the book they don’t know they want until they discover it in the store. Books about books fall into the latter category. You read them to find out what others think about the book you might have enjoyed or hated, and to learn about other books that perhaps will attract your interest.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BOOKS is precisely the type of book that I have described. A Harvard professor of comparative literature and the founder of Harvard’s Institute for World Literature, David Damrosch loves global fiction. Fluent in 12 languages, he has the ability to read many of the classics in their original tongue. When the pandemic struck and travel came to a halt, he decided to bring a selection of the world’s greatest books to readers through a fictional adventure.

"AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BOOKS is an insightful journey into books that we know and ones that we might wish to know."

Damrosch chose as his vehicle for this undertaking a favorite literary character, Phileas Fogg, the adventurer in Jules Verne’s AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS. Similar to Fogg’s adventure, Damrosch begins his tour in London and journeys around the world to Venice, Krakow, the African continent, Asia and points east. Ending in New York, he is able to return to the pages of novels that he loved and learn new insights into problems authors have confronted for centuries and continue to address in contemporary literature.

In London, Damrosch begins his journey with Virginia Woolf’s MRS. DALLOWAY. He chose it because it is so localized, taking place on a single day in June 1923, and it shows London becoming the world city that it is today. It is post-World War I, with aftershocks resonating throughout the city. Additionally, the great English novels of Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and P.G. Wodehouse are part of the London exploration and experiences --- an appropriate starting point for our travels.

The book also serves as a personal adventure for Damrosch, who includes pictures from his own journeys to Egypt, Israel and Mexico. A chapter on Krakow features memories of his family; some escaped the Nazis during World War II, while others were not so fortunate. Those of us who experienced Phileas Fogg through either the novel or the movie recall a hectic adventure, undertaken after a boast in a gentlemen’s club. Damrosch follows a far more leisurely pace in keeping with his goal of expanding our knowledge of the books and authors he has chosen for this project.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BOOKS is an insightful journey into books that we know and ones that we might wish to know.

Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman on November 19, 2021

review of around the world in 80 books

Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch

  • Publication Date: November 16, 2021
  • Genres: Literary Criticism , Nonfiction , Travel
  • Hardcover: 432 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Press
  • ISBN-10: 0593299884
  • ISBN-13: 9780593299883

review of around the world in 80 books

  • International edition
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Around the World in 80 Trees.

Around the World in 80 Trees by Jonathan Drori review – a wonderful tour

From baobabs to London planes, the unique characteristics of the Earth’s trees and their role in human lives

T here’s a whole world in every tree, says Jonathan Drori. Travelling eastwards from his London home, he chooses 80 trees from the 60,000 or so species on the planet. He starts with the London Plane, “a tree of pomp and circumstance”, first planted in Berkeley Square, Mayfair, in 1789. A hybrid of the American sycamore and the Oriental plane, they have set an example to urban planners around the world.

The smooth bark of the beech has long been associated with writing: beech boards once enclosed vellum books and in many languages the words for this tree and for the written word are similar.

baobab trees near Rufisque, Senegal.

Botswana is home to “one of the blobbiest trees on the planet”. The baobab can live for 2,000 years and it stores thousands of litres of water in its pulpy trunk. Its weird appearance is explained by one folk tale as due to the tree having ideas above its station: “The Creator exasperatedly flung the baobab upside down with its roots in the air.”

Each tree is beautifully illustrated by Lucille Clerc using a subdued but rich palette of greens and browns, with occasional splashes of more vibrant colour. This is a wonderful tour of the Earth’s trees, revealing their unique characteristics and the vital roles they have played in human life and culture.

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COMMENTS

  1. Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch review

    Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch review - an erudite tour of the author's head Inspired by Phileas Fogg, an academic treks across the globe without leaving his library in a...

  2. AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BOOKS

    AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BOOKS | Kirkus Reviews Reviews BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BOOKS by David Damrosch ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 9, 2021 This rewarding literary Baedeker will inspire readers to discover new places. bookshelf shop now A modern-day Phileas Fogg circumnavigates the globe in books.

  3. 'Around the World in 80 Books' Review: The Ultimate Armchair Traveler

    The title of "Around the World in 80 Books," Mr. Damrosch's record of his armchair travels, is a nod to the popular Jules Verne novel about a 19th-century gentleman who decides to sprint ...

  4. Reviews

    Taking his cue from Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days and Xavier de Maistre's Voyage Around My Room, historian Damrosch (How to Read World Literature) embarks on an enlightening tour of global literature.

  5. Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch

    531 ratings124 reviews A transporting and illuminating voyage around the globe, through classic and modern literary works that are in conversation with one another and with the world around them

  6. A Literary Scholar Takes Us Around the World in Eighty Books

    Jennifer Nalewicki Travel Correspondent November 18, 2021 In his new book Around the World in 80 Books, David Damrosch builds an itinerary that circumnavigates the globe—and doesn't...

  7. Around the World in 80 Books: A Global Reading List

    Canada - The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood: A novel within a novel that spans much of the twentieth century as it explores the life of its protagonist. Chad - Told by Starlight in Chad by Joseph Brahim Seid: Scenes and stories from the author's childhood in Chad. Chile - Ten Women by Marcela Serrano: Nine women connected by their ...

  8. Around the World in 80 Books

    "AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BOOKS is an insightful journey into books that we know and ones that we might wish to know." Damrosch chose as his vehicle for this undertaking a favorite literary character, Phileas Fogg, the adventurer in Jules Verne's AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS.

  9. A Vast Journey Through Literary History in "Around the World in 80 Books"

    A review of David Damrosch's new book, "Around the World in 80 Books." If there is an academic in America most committed to the idea of literature as a vast, human project, an artistic process of knowing and revealing that spans across social and political boundaries—even historical epochs—it is Harvard University's David Damrosch.

  10. Around the World in 80 Books

    Around the World in 80 Books lifts us up and into locales as diverse as London and Cairo, Venice and Bar Harbor . . . [a] treasure chest of his own creation." — Ryan Asmussen, Chicago Review of Books "Damrosch's idiosyncratic intellectual itinerary is a gift that will inspire many a book group and inform many readers' future travels."

  11. Book Review: Around the World in 80 Books

    Around the World in 80 Books is the result of those literary travels, and invites even more readers to plot a course through the wonders of world literature. There are probably few American literary luminaries as suited to showcasing the scale and scope of the world's books as David Damrosch, a Harvard professor of comparative literature and ...

  12. Around the World in 80 Books

    Around the World in 80 Books lifts us up and into locales as diverse as London and Cairo, Venice and Bar Harbor . . . [a] treasure chest of his own creation." —Ryan Asmussen, Chicago Review of Books "Damrosch's idiosyncratic intellectual itinerary is a gift that will inspire many a book group and inform many readers' future travels."

  13. Around the World in 80 Books

    Inspired by Jules Verne's hero, Phileas Fogg, David Damrosch --- chair of Harvard University's department of comparative literature and founder of Harvard's Institute for World Literature --- set out to counter a pandemic's restrictions on travel by exploring 80 exceptional books from around the globe. Following a literary itinerary from London to Venice, Tehran and points beyond, and ...

  14. Around the World in 80 Books

    Based on 6 reviews Rave Positive Mixed Pan What The Reviewers Say Rave Peter Conrad, The Observer (UK) Damrosch proceeds at a...leisurely pace, though he occasionally makes weightless associative leaps ... Damrosch avoids diffuseness by seizing on spatial coincidences ...

  15. Around the World in 80 Books

    globe-spanning hero Phileas Fogg, in my case voyaging around the world not in person but through eighty books. During 16 weeks from May-August 2020, this website chronicled my travels through classic and contemporary world literature, offering readers worldwide the chance to look freshly at some much-loved works and to make new discoveries

  16. Around the World in 80 Books Summary and Reviews

    This information about Around the World in 80 Books was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter.Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication.

  17. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

    245,294 ratings10,957 reviews One night in the reform club, Phileas Fogg bets his companions that he can travel across the globe in just eighty days. Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, he immediately sets off for Dover with his astonished valet Passepartout.

  18. New in Paperback: 'Around the World in 80 Trees' and 'The Truths We

    AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 TREES, by Jonathan Drori. Illustrations by Lucille Clerc. (Laurence King, 240 pp., $19.99.) ... top authors and critics join the Book Review's podcast to talk about the ...

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    To get the most from this SummaReview of Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne, after you have read the book review/summary, reflectively answer the following questions: ... Phileas Fogg takes up the challenge to travel around the world in 80 days. He bets 20,000 pounds that he can do it. They accept the bet and Fogg decides to leave ...

  20. AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY GAMES

    When he has travelled to attend conferences and meetings around the world, he has tried to find out how the locals amuse themselves. In his latest book, the author examines the mechanics and history of each game (he does not include sports) as well as the underlying math. "Tell me the game you play," he writes, "and I'll tell you who ...

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    Paperback. $18.96 8 Used from $10.10 15 New from $11.38. Great on Kindle. Great Experience. Great Value. Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book. Learn more about Great on Kindle, available in select categories. A transporting and illuminating voyage around the globe, through classic and modern literary ...

  22. Around the World in 80 Books

    Inspired by Jules Verne's hero, Phileas Fogg, David Damrosch --- chair of Harvard University's department of comparative literature and founder of Harvard's Institute for World Literature --- set out to counter a pandemic's restrictions on travel by exploring 80 exceptional books from around the globe. Following a literary itinerary from London to Venice, Tehran and points beyond, and ...

  23. Around the World in 80 Trees by Jonathan Drori review

    Travelling eastwards from his London home, he chooses 80 trees from the 60,000 or so species on the planet. He starts with the London Plane, "a tree of pomp and circumstance", first planted in ...