Togo - The Upper World - Femi Fadugba

Togo - The Upper World - Femi Fadugba

2nd Dec 2025

Just out doing a few jobs in my hometown of Belper, and popping into the local Oxfam bookstore. It's a decent sized secondhnas books store and does have a science fiction and fantasy section. I do like to browse through the shelf, but it's mainly fantasy books, and light on science fiction. But this book caught my eye due to the don't used was the same as one used by Wole Tablay's Brass head of shindig, and the authors name stood out as an African name. A quick Google and BOOM! Born in Togo. 30 seconds and £2.99 later the book was in my pocket and on my To Be Read list.

Andorra - The Phaeton Report - Albert Salvado

Liechtenstein - Cat Virus - Armin Öhri

I said this so many times on this blog, that the best thing about this project is the people I've met. And Liechtenstein is no expectation. I did my usual googling and trawling the web for science fiction authors from Liechtenstein but came away empty handed.

Switzerland - Into the Sun - Charles Ferdinand Ramuz

Switzerland - Into the sun - Charles Ferdinand Ramuz

20th October 2025

Book arrived

Trinidad and Tobago - Lex Talionis - R.S.A. Garcia

How I found the book:

I discovered R.S.A. Garcia at Worldcon 2024, added her to to read list and then didn't update this blog and forgot out her until WorldCon2025 rolled around and I looked at my notes from 2024, and quickly made this page and added the book to my shopping cart.

5th Sept 2025:

Ordered the book

7th Sept 2025:

Book arrived, so this is good point to talk about the cover of the book. It's ok. Nothing inspiring, not to my taste, and after reading the book. I've no idea who the lady is on the front cover as the main female character has green eyes, and the cover art has a lady with brown eyes. One really nice aesthetic in the book is repeated use of ... --- ..., which is morse code for SOS, which features plenty of times throughout the book.

17th Oct 2025:

I'm 4 or 5 chapters in and loving this book. It's pacey and mysterious. It is that kind of sci fi book that doesn't give explanations or back stories of first contacts or big technological breakthroughs, you're just thrown into a world with different alien lifeforms and advanced tech. And it works! It's a great universe to set up a classic Jane Doe type story. And I am fully hooked already.

7th Nov 2025:

I feel like i'm reading the book quite slowly and feeling quite disappointed at the lack of time i'm putting into the book. The end of the 2nd part of the book, where we learn more about Jane Doe's past is incredible. There are two fight scenes happening in 2 difference place with completely different people. The two fight scenes are played out in alternate paragraphs. I've never read anything like that before, and it was such a great experience. I've read really great books. Books by incredibly well respected and honoured authors. but this was a great novelty, and so much fun. It's rare I reach out to an author to fan boy over what I've read. But I couldn't help myself and messaged R.S.A. Garcia, who kindly replied stating how proud she was of that part of the book.

25th Nov 2025:

I finished the book, and its great. I had a great time reading this, loads of action, twists and tales of retribution and revenge and power. It has nothing to do with Trinidad and Tobago, that I can notice. It doesn't scratch that international itch. But once again this project has delivered  an absolute gem!

Spain - Natural Consequences - Elia-Barceló

8th October 2025:
Found whilst updating the blog on my book from Catalonia, and debating with myself whether or not to split Catalonia and Spain into separate countries. I did, as this book looks great.

16th October 2025:

The book arrived.

Cuba - Super Extra Grande - Yoss

I love his book. It's funny and witty, and Im absolutely in love with the universe it's set it. With 7 species all discovering FTL travel around the same sort of time and all of them heading out into the milky way to start exploring and colonising. The fact that FTL development was discovered as a breakthrough in isolation goes against what other authors do, where technology in general is hugely advanced at the same time. But what I love about Super Extra Grande is that it mirrors exploration from 300 plus years ago with the French, British, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish all building boats and exploring the world. They had abilities to travel faster than ever before, but communications hadn't developed at the same rate, to cover the new distances they could travel. This premis has really stuck with with me, more so than the other ideas in the book. I love the idea of FTL travel with out FTL communication, and it does occur in other books I've read. But in Super Extra Grande it's just so funny and so many people are just bumbling around the universe blindly.

It's only a fairly short novel, with only one thread, but that makes it a really enjoyable read, nothing heavy, just indulgent fun. I was quite worried about this book, as I'd read a couple of reviews mentioning how masoginistic Yoss is. And was put off early on in the story when one of the female aliens has 6 boobs. And I guess the main female characters are hopelessly in love with the main character, and obviously they have a three way relationship. So maybe the books isn't the best book for promoting strong female characters. But not every book has to do that either. Accept it for what it is, and what it isn't, and go along for the ride.

 Syria - A True History - Lucian of Samosata

11th September 2025

How I found the book:
I was actually looking for Greek science fiction authors and came across this, it was originally written in Greek, and seems to be considered as 'Greek' but Lucian was born in what is modern day Syria, so for my project it's the map and boundaries that that exist when I'm creating the post.

North Macedonia - The Veil - Ivan Stojanovski

11th September 2025:

How I found the book:

I Googled "north Macedonian science fiction authors" and found The Veil by Ivan Stojanovski. The reason I chose North Macedonia, is because; a, it's not been ticked off yet and, b, because we adopted our dog from North Macedonia. I've said North Macedonia four times now which is quite a mouthful.

The Physical Book:

Clearly self published and probably using the cheapest possible options. The book looks like a text book as it's an A4 sized paperback with no real cover design. Again probably the cheapest option. There is no publisher information, no copyright information, no blurb, no forward (don't read them very often anyway). Just an ISBN and then the book starts on Page 2. I guess this comes under physical attributes. But the book is riddled with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors. Weird and massively inconsistent uses of breaks, line spacing, indentations. Every page has at least one of these errors. This book has never been proof read by a native English person. I can only assume it was written in English as there isn't anyone credited with the translation of the work. And even a basic online translator wouldn't result in so many spelling errors!

I had to stop reading the book after 100 pages. The errors are so distracting and annoying I just couldn't get into a flow, despite many attempts. I'm not particularly good at spelling or the technical aspects of English writing. So there will be so many more errors, my basic knowledge didn't even spot. I will come back to the book just taking a break with a couple of other well written books before picking this up again.

Lebanon - The Book of Elsewhere - Keanu Reeves

I remembered I purchased the china melville and Keanu Reeves book. And Keanu was born in Lebanon. As if I couldn't that wooden acting, all round nice guy and cult hero any more, he then goes and writes a book that I can tick off my list. You sir deserve a knighthood! 

Barbados - The Blue, Beautiful World - Karen Lord

5th Sept 2025

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Lord

found via : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbytvM1-smY

Norway - The History of Bees - Maja Lunde

3rd Sept 2025:

Found this 

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-history-of-bees/maja-lunde/9781471162770

I have a feeling i've read The morning Star by a Norweigian author, but it didn't have a sci fi feel to it.... this doesn't have much of a sci fi feel either, but its slips into the dystopian sub category, and looks into the future also! so its is a bit of a tick. not a solid marker pen TICK, just a pencil tick.

10th Sept 2025:
Purchased a second hand copy arrived today! I realised I hadn't read The Morning Star, but I had listened to the audio book, the book was ok, but not much happened, it was super weird and creepy. Just as it was getting going the book ended. Their is a sequal, or maybe a prequal. But i'm probably not going to bother with them. So I'm quite looking forward to The History of Bees.

Ethiopia - The Stars Seem So Far Away - Margret Helgadottir

4th Sept 2025

The Stars Seem So Far Away 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margret_Helgadottir

Born in Ethiopia, found whilst searching for Norweigan Sci Fi authors.

I had look for more Ethopian authors but could find any, so looks like Magret is my Ethiopian choice.

Canada (French) - A Strange Manuscript found in a Copper Cylinder - James De Mille

How I found the book:

I found this book in a super cool sendcond hand book stall by the canal in a large gentrified courtyard near Camden Market in London. Now I know French Canada isn't a country in it's own right. But my other half is half French and and would love to visit the French parts of Canada and the French parts of the USA also. So for this project i'm happy to split Canada and French Canada. And this book looked very intriguing due to is age, having been published in 1888! And i'm becoming quite the fan of 19th century science fiction.

The Physical Book:
The book did stand out to me, as i was just browsing the uber cool, gentrified second hand book store. The store was frequented with young hip dudes, with wispy moustaches, bad haircuts, pisspoor tattoos of cartoon characters. These dudes were probably on dates, trying to impress their partners, who had equally bad haircuts and awkwardly worn clothes. Impressing each other and trying to find old copies of Kafka, and dismissing digital books and audio book, as they dont have the 'same vibe'. After picking the book aftering being struck by the authors name. A quick look at the inside cover told me it was Canadian, and a quick google lead me to French Canada, so it was a easy purchase.

The Story:
It was a proper old school adventure sotry, with shipwrecks, canabalistic tribes, dinosaurs, love triangles and flying beasts. But their is also a touching love story interwoven with all the adventuring. There is some deeper satirical content dealing with greed and desired to better ones self at the cost of others. I raced through the book and when I only had about 30 pages left I had no idea how it was going to end, and was concerned the ending was going to be aweful. But the ending fitted with the rest of the book, and was nicely wrapped up, but with the possiblilty of more. But the book was published postumously so there was no sequal.

How canadian:
I'm not sure, it had a definate first world feel to the story with plenty of 'By Jove' comments made by the characters. I guess it felt more British to me. But i don't really know much about Canada

Conclusion:
I really enjoyed this, and was a great example of a 19th century science fiction adventure story. I hate making camparisons when writing about books, but I think I prefered this to some Jules Verne stories. Jules Vernes ideas and stories were more exciting. But the all the lengthy sciencetific explainations. Read it, enjoy it!

Slovakia - The Man who saw Seconds - Alexander Boldizar Slovakia

Slovakia - The Man who saw Seconds - Alexander Boldizar

How I found the book:

The podcast is listed on some database somewhere, so i occasionaly get emails from people promoting their books. A lot of the time they are American authors so I don't it any further and turn down their offers of promotional digital copies. The email from Alexander was interesting so i returned the email with some information about the project I'm doing, and he told me he was born in Slovakia! Win!. I've already covered Slovakia with The Science of the Stars by Gustav Reuss. Technically Gustav Reuss was born in Czechoslovakia, back when the Czech Republic and Slovakia where still a unified country. Alexander was kind enough to give me a free audio copy of the book. I was totally stoked to recieve a free book for this project, but i promise that won't alter my views on the book. Also as part of this project i'm also building a physical library of the books i'm reading, so I purchased a physical copy also.

The physical book:

Its a good looking book, pretty old school and simplistic artwork, nothing that would jump out at me, but it's a pretty little book.

The Story:

Its a super cool concept, basically the lead guy can see about 10 seconds into the future, which means he makes his money gambling. He's trying to lead a normal life and not let on to anyone his power. Things kick off when he's stopped on the train by a transit cop. The cop ends up injured and the local police then join in the man hunt. Due to our heros ability he can dodge bullets and is an incredible marksman. which means he never makes a deadly shot and remains unscathed. 

The man hunt escolates and. infact we end up in a nuclear stand off with assured mutual destruction on the cards that woud effect 90% of the world!

How Slovakian:

After an email conversation with the author, and reading another blog interview about his work. This is very much inspired by the Eastern block, communism, and all those freedom fighters, cynics, and silent heroes that resisted the 'Man'

Would I reccomend?

Yeah, it's am action packed book. It's great fun. There a good bit of science in the middle all about cognition, and sonsory perception was was facsinating, but felt a bit out of place, or maybe just toooooo much science. Dunno, i'm not an editor.

Morocco - The Dream Hotel - Laila Lalami

21st Aug 2025:

Random googling of a country and "science fiction author"

Found this:

The Dream Hotel

Novel by Laila Lalami

Looks good will order when I'm back from holiday

5th Sept 2025:

Ordered the book

7th Sept 2025

Book arrived

30th October 2025

Started the audio book

6th November 2025

Finished the audio book.

I usually read the physical novels for this project, and did buy the physical book, partly because I read slower and take more in, with a physical book. I've also never quite got on with ebooks and ereaders. But I had a spare credit on audible and thought this would be fun to try.

The Physical Book:

It's

The Story:

I'm not sure about this book. I kind of liked it. There was a very close personal feel to it. It really micro focused on one female character who gets detained, to determine her risk of committing a crime, that the system has predicted she will commit. Her 21 day detention turns in to a year long saga of extensions to her detention, conspiracies and sinister realisations.

Minority report (the film, never read the book it's based on) did the same but with far more action and fuxkwit prick as lead actor, but I'll not descend into full anti Cruise mode just yet. There are references in the book to Metamorphosis by Kafka. This is a book I've read and I rather like the Kafka book along with The Trail, by the same author. They are both about the absurdatities of burocracy and that once your in 'the system' you're on an endless pointless treadmill until you die.

This book did play on those ideas of being totally helpless and at the whim of pendants and policymakers. 

The sci-fi element was slightly more interesting with developments in recording dreams and the ability to place subliminal adverts into dreams, completely covertly.

Overview:

Yeah a nice story, that was needlessly long with not much happening, that just kind of ended with out any real resolution or message of either hope or one of an eternally hopelessness life. And if the author had picked one of those it would have been great, but the ended was just a little: 'oh ok...'

So I probably wouldn't recommend, and I'm glad I did this via listening, whilst at work, rather than investing the time in a physical book..

Iran - Shacasta - Doris Lessing

13th Aug 2025, after finding an article on African science fiction, it turned out one of the authors was born in Persia (modern day Iran) and she wrote a series of 5 science fiction books.

So I'm looking into the works of Doris Lessing

14th Aug 

Whilst on holiday manage to find a copy of Shacasta from an online french bookshop for €6 so order to the holiday home

Hungary - Metropole - Ferenc Karinthy

How I found the book:

Just googling Hungarian science fiction authors. Can't remember why I pick Hungary to Google, probably because I visited Budapest 12 or 13 years ago with my other half for Christmas and had a lovely time, and because I'm focused more on ticking off all the European countries at the moment. Metropole kept popping up and if got a mixed bag of reviews but it was a pretty popular book so I got a 2 d hand copy online. 

The physical book:

Standard paperback, ok quality, the cover was fairly uninspired. Not something that would have lept out and shouted "read me!"

The story:

I had fairly low expectations for the book, it was an Eastern European dystopian story with dull looking cover. This smacked of a being a bit of a slog, especially as I was reading this straight after reading the beautifully luxurious Red Sword.

But i was wrong, I couldn't put this book down and I'm not quite sure why. Their wasn't much of a story, nothing was really happening. But I was hooked into following the story of this man who got on the wrong plane ended up in a mega busy city, not understanding the language, and just pottering around trying to understand where he is and how to get home. The book is so engaging, I just wanted to know more and more, and how he was going to decipher his predicament. 

He does get involved in small scale capers, with the lift operator, visits a church, a prostitute, and an abbatoir. They were all weird little side stories, very surreal but believable and totally alien to him and any travel experience I've had.

The second half of the book builds in intensity, weirdness and excitement. Our hero gets kicked out of his hotel, becomes a homeless vagrant, and manages to get involved in some sort of city military coup that last one day, and is completely tidied away and swept under the carpet the next day!

As the book got closer and closer to the end I tried to predict the ending and within the final few pages their was a soft ending which I was fairly happy with, but if you want to find out, then read it for yourself.

Conclusion:

I really enjoyed this book and read it at every possible opportunity until I finished it. I really enjoyed the mystery and weirdness off the city he found himself in, and really enjoyed the in-depth introspective conversations on language history and evolution. I was put off by sex and beating scene, and found that uncomfortable and wish it hadn't been in the book.

I would recommend this book, it's weird, a completely different look at dystopia. Not massively 'sci fi' but a great rrad i would happily loan out to my science fiction friends and any one who likes to read something I usual.

Book history

-Need to reseach

Korea (South) - Red Sword - Bora Chung 

How I found the book:

I subscribe to Honford press' email newsletter, and they are such a cool publishing house, specialising in translated works. I had already read Tower from South Korea, but when I saw Red Sword and red the preview, it sounded a lot more 'Science Fictiony' than Tower, so thought I would add this to my collection. 

The physical Book: 

First of all, I love this book! The physical book is absolutely beautiful and a wonderful thing to hold. The cover is super simplistic and Uber cool, with a giant red metallic sword cutting through what looks like clouds of fog. The cover was designed by Jieun Hahm. It's not often I'm delighted by the physical book, but the whole layout is perfect for reading, easy fonts, subtle and stylish page numbering. Even the paper is slightly thicker and more luxurious than other books. Before I totally bore you with the weight of the pages, there is another really cool feature with the books main body being sanwiched between two sheets of super thick heavy tracing paper. Giving the page behind an eirey feel when lifted away. This effect is mirrored in the story with the planet they land on being covered in a deep white fog. So huge kudos to Doosung, South Korea who provided the tracing paper, Paju, South Korea who printed and bound the book, and Honford Star who published the translated work in the UK.

The story:

Ok that's enough swooning over the physical book, well for now, until I remember something else to to book geek over. It's a great intriging story, that builds and i loved reading the story. As the story develops you learn more about the characters and their stories, but there is still so much unknown and mysterious. The action scenes are alway fun and the weapons are pretty cool too. you're never quite sure which side to pick, who are the bad guys and who are good, or is everyone bad. It's great read and I got through it pretty quickly.

How Korean?

The story is inspired by China's invasions where they took Korean slaves to fill the ranks in their armies. So if reflects parts of Koreanean history.

Would I recommend?

I think so. I mean I liked it. I think science fiction fans would like it. Or at least be curious about it. So I'm guessing if you are reading this then you are a science fiction fan looking at expanding your reading experience, so I would recommend this to you! It's an easy read.

Africa research

Found this: 

https://reactormag.com/the-best-african-speculative-short-fiction-stories-of-2024/