From The Atheneum
By Maureen Beck
Summer time invites relaxation, taking a vacation or going on a trip. Alas, the cost of gas and airline tickets is sky-rocketing. Getting somewhere is not always half the fun these days. But the Atheneum suggests a way around the expense of a vacation away from home. Use books as your traveling companions, instead. This summer the library will present an adult reading program for fun called Novel Destinations.
Choose a place you’d like to go to. Then visit the library and select books by authors familiar with that place, its history, its culture, and its special characteristics. The Atheneum has an extensive number of volumes, especially novels, translated from the original language into English. As you read, you may discover that some authors disagree with others about the nature of the place or reveal old secrets and legends. Cook books from other countries’ palates are especially exciting to explore.
Each week in the summer Novel Destinations will escort readers to a different country and meet various authors and new characters from that particular area. We will learn the complexity of the second largest continent, Africa, through its vibrant literary heritage. In Egypt the novels of Naguib Mahfouz show the breakdown in family loyalties because of politics and women’s assertion of individual rights. In South Africa Alan Paton in “Cry The Beloved Country” initiates the crusade for freedom and civil rights for the native populations.  Chinua Achebe in Nigeria writes about the collapse of the tribal kingdoms and the rise of dictators who do not value the rights of the people. Yvonne Vera’s “Butterfly Burning” acquaints readers with Zimbabwe. Bessie Head’s “When Rain Clouds Gather” introduces us travelers to Botswana.
Detective stories becoming very popular in other languages now are being translated into English. The Scandinavian whodunits are presently outselling the British classics in crime. From Iceland, Sweden, and Norway we discover that aspects of weather, dark winters, and endless summer sun, figure in the Swedish novels of Henning Mankell, Norwegian Per Pettersen, and Arnaldur Indridason.  In Spain Arturo Perez-Reverte follows the track of Spain’s religious and artistic achievements through his cleverly planned mystery stories.
Then there are the yearnings of one’s spiritual self defined in the Russian stories of Mikhail Bulgakov (“The Master and Margarita”), Fyodor Dostoevsky (“Crime and Punishment”), and Anton Chekov, the writer of plays and stories of comfortable but cloistered living in country estates.   `’The Incredible Lightness of Being” by Czech writer Milan Kundera and “This Earth of Mankind” by Indonesian patriot  Pramoedya Ananta Toer cry out for independence from foreign rule and encourage  their countries’ pride in their culture.
Atheneum readers will begin their travels on June 20 when the library will hand out to patrons reading lists representing a variety of countries or regions around the world. Each week new displays at the library will offer insights into the readings for that area to investigate. At the end of August Nantucket photographer Terry Pommet will close the summer program with a slideshow of images from his recent trip to China.
Readers need not pack a bag or hurry off island to travel the world this summer. The sights and language and culture of your destinations are close by, downtown, at the Atheneum.
