Original subtitles

We live in an age of great translators.

There are wonderful renderings of books

into English now, from many, many different languages.

This, in a way-- it gives us the world.

You will find as much help, as much inspiration,

in books that come from far flung

corners of the world written in languages you don't speak

and talking about people very different from yourself.

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You know, I think there's a tendency

that we all have to be a little-- to be

parochial in our reading.

You know, to-- to want to read books about people

like us living in a place like the place where we live.

We recognize in the book versions

that we recognize as variations on our own lives.

that we recognize as variations on our own lives.

And that's natural that we want to read those kinds of books.

But I think if we only do that, then we deprive ourselves

of enormous riches.

And certainly, I would say that books not written

originally in English have been at least as important to me

as books that were written in English.

The question of whether there's a--

of whether there's a cannon, you know,

whether there are great books that we should all know--

I mean, I think the answer is yes.

But the way in which that cannon has been defined

has been very narrow.

You know, so, yes, we should read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

and Proust and Joyce and Kafka.

But very often the way in which the canon

But very often the way in which the canon

has been defined in the West has been

to exclude a lot of writing.

It's been to exclude writing by non-white writers

and to exclude writing by non-English language writers.

You know, so I think there's an argument for making

another kind of cannon, which is more internationalist and more

diverse.

You know, the literary canon which is genuinely global.

And I sometimes think it was a good fortune for me

And I sometimes think it was a good fortune for me

never to have studied English literature.

Because I never had a canon imposed on me,

you know, by professors.

I didn't have to be told about the great tradition

and obliged to worship at the shrine of D. H. Lawrence.

You know, I read--

I read in my own idiosyncratic way.

Like, I suddenly get interested in Russian literature.

I'd read everything.

And then I'd swing over here and start reading Latin Americans,

And then I'd swing over here and start reading Latin Americans,

you know, et cetera.

I would just go on these adventures in literature

as my way of educating myself, teaching myself about writing.

You may well find that the book that unlocks something

in your head, the book that shows you the way,

is something that was originally written in Russian or Japanese

or Hungarian, you know.

You never know.

And it's worth just going on these voyages of discovery

And it's worth just going on these voyages of discovery

to see what they can give you.

There are Indian writers that I deeply admire, like

the novelist Anita Desai, who I would say

is the kind of heir of Jane Austen.

You know, that she's writing in India books which--

which feel like what Jane Austen might have written if she

had been an Indian writer.

had been an Indian writer.

You know, as in Jane Austen, women

are very formidable characters, but are

very limited by the constraints of the culture in which they're

in, which restricts the possibilities for women.

So you know, in Jane Austen you constantly

have strong female characters pushing

against the boundaries of what's possible in British culture

at that time.

And in Anita Desai, in a novel, for example,

like "Clear Light of Day," you find the same thing happening.

like "Clear Light of Day," you find the same thing happening.

You find these very, very brilliant women

caged and trying to bust out.

There are a lot of Japanese writers that I admire

enormously, Jun'ichiro Tanizaki in particular,

who writes about the transition of Japanese society from

the traditional old style Japan to a more modern world.

the traditional old style Japan to a more modern world.

And to write about the tensions and frictions that

happen inside families and inside communities

in that process of transition.

And I think that's--

that has always been a subject for me in a different place.

How does a traditional society change into a modern society?

I think that's something I've thought about a lot

in the context of India, for example.

You know, so Japanese writers have

helped me think about that.

Latin American literature has been important to me,

partly because when I started reading the great South

American writers, I had never been

to South America or Central America at all.

I knew only the books.

But when I read the books, I found a lot there

that was familiar to me from my own experience in South Asia.

that was familiar to me from my own experience in South Asia.

That's to say, both worlds had a colonial history, very powerful

colonial history.

Different colonizers.

Spanish in one case, British in another.

But the same kind of experience of colonization.

Both worlds were societies in which

there was a great disparity between wealth and poverty.

A few people, very rich.

A large number of people, bitterly poor.

A large number of people, bitterly poor.

Both worlds had a kind of conflict between--

between the reality of the city and the reality of rural life,

village life.

Both worlds had armies that tended to interfere in politics

and a history of dictators.

And so I found when I'm reading these Latin Americans,

I thought, oh, this is really quite like

where I come from, but kind of translated into Spanish.

where I come from, but kind of translated into Spanish.

A number of the Latin American writers

who have become so celebrated as magic realists

say that they were inspired by the 1001 Nights,

that they were reading Spanish translation, obviously,

of these Arabic stories.

And that helped them to develop their own voices.

So I had a fellow feeling when I was reading these books.

And that's been inspiring to me, because it's

And that's been inspiring to me, because it's

given me ways of thinking about the world that I came from.

So yes, of course, you read inside your language

and inside your culture.

But I think you'd just be doing yourself a favor

to go outside those boundaries as well.

Because you might find in-- in worlds very, very

remote from your own things that you recognize and things that

are helpful to you in your own work.

are helpful to you in your own work.