Alert! Wasafiri, the journal of contemporary “world writing”, is officially venerable. It turned 25 this year – and to mark the anniversary, conducted a poll of 25 top writers on their 25 favourite books.
Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude wins the informal caucus, by virtue of having been singled out twice amongst the 25. Two Africans get a look in, meanwhile: Ben Okri for The Famished Road and sometime homeboy JM Coetzee for Disgrace.
The authors’ notes on their picks follow the complete list, which includes some relative unknowns in addition to the instantly-recognizable heavyweights (The Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris, anyone?):
Gabriel García Márquez’s seminal novel One Hundred Years of Solitude tops the list of books that have most shaped world literature over the last twenty-five years, according to a survey of international writers specially commissioned by Wasafiri as part of its twenty-fifth anniversary.
The 25 books were chosen by 25 respected names in international writing, many of whom have contributed over the years to Wasafiri magazine, including Indra Sinha, Blake Morrison and Fred D’Aguiar. The list of prize-winning fiction, poetry and ground-breaking non-fiction includes Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie; Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama; Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes; Nabokov’s Lolita and JM Coetzee’s Disgrace. Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude was the only book to have been picked by more than one writer, demonstrating the huge breadth of writing covered within world literature.
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Aminatta Forna: The Famished Road by Ben Okri
I think Ben Okri’s The Famished Road did for a literature concerned with Africa what Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children did for literature of and about India. I think both books brought a new interest, audience and understanding to literature that was not of the West. Both authors were based in the UK and were published by UK publishers, they open the floodgates for writers based both here and on Asian and African continents who offered a new way of seeing.
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