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We live in an age
of great translators.

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There are wonderful
renderings of books

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into English now, from many,
many different languages.

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

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You will find as much
help, as much inspiration,

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in books that come
from far flung

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

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and talking about people
very different from yourself.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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You know, I think
there's a tendency

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

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parochial in our reading.

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

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

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We recognize in
the book versions

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that we recognize as
variations on our own lives.

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that we recognize as
variations on our own lives.

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

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

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of enormous riches.

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And certainly, I would
say that books not written

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originally in English have been
at least as important to me

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as books that were
written in English.

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The question of
whether there's a--

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of whether there's
a cannon, you know,

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

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I mean, I think
the answer is yes.

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But the way in which that
cannon has been defined

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has been very narrow.

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

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and Proust and Joyce and Kafka.

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But very often the
way in which the canon

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But very often the
way in which the canon

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has been defined in
the West has been

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to exclude a lot of writing.

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

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and to exclude writing by
non-English language writers.

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

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another kind of cannon, which is
more internationalist and more

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diverse.

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You know, the literary canon
which is genuinely global.

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And I sometimes think it
was a good fortune for me

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And I sometimes think it
was a good fortune for me

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never to have studied
English literature.

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Because I never had a
canon imposed on me,

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you know, by professors.

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

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

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You know, I read--

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I read in my own
idiosyncratic way.

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Like, I suddenly get interested
in Russian literature.

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I'd read everything.

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

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

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you know, et cetera.

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I would just go on these
adventures in literature

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

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You may well find that the
book that unlocks something

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

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is something that was originally
written in Russian or Japanese

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or Hungarian, you know.

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You never know.

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

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

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to see what they can give you.

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There are Indian writers
that I deeply admire, like

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the novelist Anita
Desai, who I would say

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is the kind of heir
of Jane Austen.

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

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which feel like what Jane
Austen might have written if she

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had been an Indian writer.

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had been an Indian writer.

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You know, as in
Jane Austen, women

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are very formidable
characters, but are

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

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in, which restricts the
possibilities for women.

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So you know, in Jane
Austen you constantly

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have strong female
characters pushing

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against the boundaries of what's
possible in British culture

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at that time.

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

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

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

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You find these very,
very brilliant women

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caged and trying to bust out.

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There are a lot of Japanese
writers that I admire

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enormously, Jun'ichiro
Tanizaki in particular,

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who writes about the transition
of Japanese society from

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the traditional old style
Japan to a more modern world.

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the traditional old style
Japan to a more modern world.

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And to write about the
tensions and frictions that

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happen inside families
and inside communities

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in that process of transition.

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And I think that's--

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

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How does a traditional society
change into a modern society?

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

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in the context of
India, for example.

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You know, so
Japanese writers have

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helped me think about that.

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Latin American literature
has been important to me,

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partly because when I started
reading the great South

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American writers,
I had never been

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to South America or
Central America at all.

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I knew only the books.

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

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

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

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

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colonial history.

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Different colonizers.

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Spanish in one case,
British in another.

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But the same kind of
experience of colonization.

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Both worlds were
societies in which

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there was a great disparity
between wealth and poverty.

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A few people, very rich.

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A large number of
people, bitterly poor.

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A large number of
people, bitterly poor.

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Both worlds had a kind
of conflict between--

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

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village life.

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Both worlds had armies that
tended to interfere in politics

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and a history of dictators.

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

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I thought, oh, this
is really quite like

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

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

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A number of the Latin
American writers

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who have become so
celebrated as magic realists

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say that they were inspired
by the 1001 Nights,

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that they were reading Spanish
translation, obviously,

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of these Arabic stories.

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And that helped them to
develop their own voices.

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

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

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

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

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So yes, of course, you
read inside your language

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and inside your culture.

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

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to go outside those
boundaries as well.

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

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remote from your own things that
you recognize and things that

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are helpful to you
in your own work.

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are helpful to you
in your own work.