Ann Morgan: Your World Literature Guru
Interview with a Reader of the World on her inspiring literary journey, lessons learned and the role translation plays in the way we perceive other nations.
Ann Morgan – Photo by Igor Emmerich
Ann Morgan is a literary activist and an avid reader who once spent a year reading a book from every country in the world and wrote about it. In addition to being a TED and TEDx Speaker, Ann is the author of original and inspired books, the latest of which has been adapted in an audible original format. She is also a Royal Literary Fund fellow and editor, and you can follow her literary adventures on https://ayearofreadingtheworld.com/
Dear Ann, thank you for being on “Corners of the Mind” where we explore issues of writing and reading, primarily in an international context. Having said so, you are the epitome of the “cosmopolitan reader.” Have you always had an interest in international literature or reading beyond the well-trodden path?
No. That was the reason for starting my 2012 Year of Reading the World quest. I looked at my bookshelves and realized that I had spent the first three decades of my life reading almost exclusively books written in English. That didn’t make sense to me, so I decided to spend a year trying to see what I could do to correct that.
If we’re not careful, our sense of the character of different nations’ literatures can become a Western construct rather than a true reflection.
— Ann Morgan
In your opinion, and based on your vast experience of reading from various cultural backgrounds, have you found universality in terms of the issues tackled, or have you gotten a sense that national identities forge the themes authors address in their work?
The clear, overarching theme is that storytelling is a universal human impulse – one with huge power to connect us across barriers of all kinds. That is incredibly powerful and gives me great hope for our ability to work together in the face of the enormous challenges humankind faces. In terms of national identities, this is a tricky one to answer, because what comes through in translation is not always entirely representative of a nation’s literature but rather of what anglophone publishers think will appeal to English-speaking readers. So if we’re not careful, our sense of the character of different nations’ literatures can become a Western construct rather than a true reflection.
You are a literary activist. What exactly does this entail?
I understand it in two ways. Firstly, championing the broadening of voices that can travel around the world. Translation into English is a huge part of this because English is the most published language and the most widely read, and so it acts as a kind of gateway language for books. Stories written in or translated into English not only have access to a huge global readership but are also more likely to be translated into other languages, so diversifying the stories that come into English has a huge impact on which voices are heard around the world. The second way I think about literary activism is using stories for positive goals – connecting people, building understanding, changing the way we think about difficult issues. Books have an extraordinary power to take us into other people’s experiences and break down othering and polarization. This is one of the reasons I started my Reading Workshops, beginning with the Incomprehension Workshop, which is built around the idea of encouraging people to embrace not knowing in reading, rather than feeling ashamed when they don’t understand.
Which languages do you originally read in?
I can read French and German (very slowly, with a big dictionary). But I stuck to English for A Year of Reading the World because the quest was about seeing whether one person in the UK could read the world, so it made sense to keep to the language that the majority of UK residents read in.
French- and Portuguese-speaking African countries are most poorly represented in English translation.
— Ann Morgan
Which countries have you discovered are most underrepresented in the international literary landscape?
Without question, French- and Portuguese-speaking African countries are most poorly represented in English translation. At the time of my quest, there were around five or six that had no literature available in English and many others that had only one or two books. This meant that I had to rely on unpublished translations. In one case, a team of volunteers even translated something specially for me!
If you were to recommend an underrated/unnoticed writer or book from the international scene, which one would that be?
Tété-Michel Kpomassie’s An African in Greenland, translated by James Kirkup and released in a new Penguin Classics edition this year as Michel the Giant. It’s a joyful account of an extraordinary journey Kpomassie undertook as a teenager, when he ran away from home in Togo and went to live with the Inuit for two years. I had the good fortune to speak to Kpomassie, who is now 80, over Zoom earlier this year and he is every bit as full of spirit, life and enthusiasm as his story suggests. A truly remarkable man and a book to match.
Which is your favorite literary genre and/or writer(s)?
I’m not really a believer in favourites, but I read everything that David Boyd and Sam Bett translate into English from the Japanese writer Mieko Kawakami.
Which book/country would you suggest to the beginner “reader of the world?”
Start wherever your curiosity leads you!
How has “reading the world” influenced you as a writer of your own books in terms of theme exploration and writing style? And most importantly, how has it altered the way you see the world, its peoples, and international affairs?
I have a much deeper sense of complexity and what stories can achieve. As a writer it has made me bolder, braver and more ambitious. And it has kept me writing too – because of the continued interest in my project, my book, Reading the World is being released in a new edition this September, ten years on from the original quest. Reading the world has now become a lifelong endeavour.
Thank you very much for being with us, Ann. Keep up the inspiring work that you do!
