ABSTRACT
Books carry men and women’s ideas across cultures, across the world. And to not be able to read books from nations in our part of the world is to be separated again and again from these neighbours even after the age of colonialism, or what Eric Hobsbawm called the age of empire, has long passed. In that age, year 1800, the Western empire physically held 35 per cent of the planet; by 1914, they had ‘85 percent of the earth as colonies, protectorates, dependencies, dominions, and commonwealths’.2
