Ann Morgan is a British author and literary explorer.

In 2012, Ann challenged herself to read a book from every country, recording her quest at ayearofreadingtheworld.com and in the non-fiction book Reading the World.

She is also the author of two novels, Beside Myself and Crossing Over. Her next non-fiction book, Relearning to Read, draws on her ongoing adventures with international literature and will be published in 2025.

I spoke to Ann about the challenges of reading books from around the world, the way these books can challenge our perceptions, translated fiction, and much more.

The conversation is part of the HLF Online series, organized by the Hyderabad Literary Festival.

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To give you a taste of our conversation, here’s Ann on translated fiction, especially translated Indian fiction.

SA: Are there more books being translated into English now than when you started out in 2012, both in Indian literature and outside?

AM: When I read Indian fiction, it is almost entirely translated fiction now. I really enjoyed Geetanjali Shree’s earlier novel, Mai, translated by Nita Kumar. I found it a really touching exploration of motherhood. I also reviewed Ghachar Ghochar [by Vivek Shanbagh, translated by Srinath Perur] for the blog as one of my books of the month. 

Having said that, Indian English is a form of English I particularly enjoy. I love the musicality of it, I love the turn of phrase. When I was growing up, there was a very hierarchical idea of English. People talked about Received Pronunciation as though there was this perfect English that arrived like a gift from the heavens and was then disseminated throughout the world. Obviously there were all kinds of problematic colonial baggage embedded in that. Now it seems to me that there is a much flatter understanding of it, which is really good…. What I’m enjoying more and more is seeing books translated by Indian English speakers, so translated into Indian English as opposed to being translated so they sound like a Julian Barnes novel. 

I think there is a certainly a wider spread of books available. Back when I did a year of reading the world, French was by far and away the most translated language into English, and that’s probably still the case, but  the range of countries represented is larger. So most of those French-language books would have been from European countries or from Canada whereas now there is more representation from Francophone African writing, for example. Not a great deal though, there is still a long way to go, but there is more. 

It is certainly true of Indian novels in translation that we hear about in the UK. There is more visibility than there used to be. It seemed to me back in 2012, that it was very difficult to find Indian novels in translation, but now there are quite a number that are celebrated and marketed. 

Also, in the UK and Ireland, there has been a boom in translated fiction. Literary fiction as a genre in total has been declining in terms of sales but translated fiction has been increasing in recent years, which is encouraging. … I hope it continues. It’s really important, especially as the world becomes more polarized and more siloed, it’s really important to have these disruptive narratives coming across the borders.

Read my review of Reading the World: How I Read a Book from Every Country, and an earlier interview with Ann Morgan (July 2021).

Go to the Hyderabad Literary Festival website.