With elder people lamenting about their zamanay and how young folks are just stuck to their screens all the time, it doesn’t take much to get disheartened about the dying art of “book reading”. But is reading really dying? You’re all “reading” this, after all. But other than you intelligent folks, there are still people who are die-hard book lovers. One such example is Aisha Esbhani.
Aisha is a 13 years old student from Karachi who aims to travel the world through books.
When she was 12 years old, she glanced at her bookshelf one fine day and realized that it was only a fixed set of English language from American and British authors. She instantly felt like something was missing and that’s when Aisha decided that she needed to read one book from every single country in the world. She then set up a Facebook page, in order to connect to the world and ask for their recommendation.
“After discovering that most of the books I read as a preschooler, as an adolescent, were by a British or North American author, I wanted to explore the writers of the African continent and the tiny islands in Asia,” Aisha writes about her journey
“I wanted to explore the nations of which I had never read any books. I wanted to explore stories that had been translated into English.”
“And so, in April 2016, I set myself on a quest of reading one novel/short story collection or memoir from every single country of the world. The author has to be a native of the country.”
After reading each book, Aisha writes a review about the book and what she learned about the country it was from.
One of my personal favorites is this one about “Moments of Merriment” by Irfan Hafiz of Sri Lanka.
Even though Aisha has already read books from 80 countries, she’s on the look out for more books from countries that aren’t readily available to purchase here in Pakistan. This project has helped her in connecting with people from all over the world, at such a tender age and she’s fulfilling her dream of travelling the world, one book at a time.
Now that sure is travel goals.