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By Tim Spalding in Deep Dives
April 23, 2026
Today is World Book Day [1], and to celebrate we thought we'd do something fun with the Syndetics Unbound data. We pulled two years of the most searched and viewed titles across U.S. public libraries—the same data behind our Top Titles posts—and built a tour of the planet, with the top author and book per country, from almost 80 nations, all the way from Argentina to Zimbabwe. We finished up by making book maps for Africa and Europe.
To assemble the list, we pulled two years of the top 50,000 titles in US public libraries and cross-referenced them against LibraryThing.com's Common Knowledge system, which has birth, residence, and nationality data for more than 200,000 authors. Winnowing that down was harder than it sounds—and more fun than we expected!
First, we needed a rule.
Both rules sound simple, but turn out to be more complex than they appear. We made judgment calls. Marjane Satrapi first published her groundbreaking graphic novel memoir, Persepolis, in French, but her work is inextricably bound to Iran, where it cannot be published. Elif Shafak is among the top literary voices in Turkey, even though she has been writing in English since 2004. Reasonable people may disagree with some of our choices. We did our best!
The results run the gamut—from classics (Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment for Russia, even Homer's Odyssey for Greece) to books published this year. Some picks are more unexpected: Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem was an enormous hit in the United States. Others are surprising. Trinidad and Tobago's top pick turned out to be Tracey Baptiste—a Trinidadian-American children's author best known for her Jumbies series, which is steeped in Trinidadian folklore. But by the numbers her most popular title is Minecraft: The Crash: An Official Minecraft Novel. Libraries have it all.
| Flag | Country | Author | Book |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇧🇼 | Botswana | Tlotlo Tsamaase | Womb City (2024) |
| 🇨🇲 | Cameroon | Imbolo Mbue | Behold the Dreamers (2016) |
| 🇪🇬 | Egypt | Deena Mohamed | Shubeik Lubeik (2022) |
| 🇬🇭 | Ghana | Yaa Gyasi | Homegoing (2016) |
| 🇰🇪 | Kenya | Lupita Nyong'o | Sulwe (2019) |
| 🇲🇼 | Malawi | William Kamkwamba | The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind [Young Readers Edition] (2015) |
| 🇲🇦 | Morocco | Leïla Slimani | Perfect Nanny (2016) |
| 🇳🇬 | Nigeria | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Dream Count (2025) |
| 🇷🇼 | Rwanda | Immaculée Ilibagiza | Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust (2006) |
| 🇸🇳 | Senegal | Mohamed Mbougar Sarr | The Most Secret Memory of Men (2021) |
| 🇸🇱 | Sierra Leone | Namina Forna | The Gilded Ones (2020) |
| 🇿🇦 | South Africa | Trevor Noah | Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016) |
| 🇸🇩 | Sudan | Zeinab Badawi | An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence (2024) |
| 🇹🇿 | Tanzania | Abdulrazak Gurnah | Theft (2025) |
| 🇹🇳 | Tunisia | Amira Ghenim | A Calamity of Noble Houses (2020) |
| 🇿🇲 | Zambia | Namwali Serpell | On Morrison (2026) |
| 🇿🇼 | Zimbabwe | Tendai Huchu | The Library of the Dead (2021) |
| Flag | Country | Author | Book |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇨🇳 | China | Cixin Liu | The Three-Body Problem (2008) |
| 🇮🇳 | India | Kiran Desai | The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (2025) |
| 🇮🇷 | Iran | Marjane Satrapi | Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (2000/2003) |
| 🇮🇶 | Iraq | Ahmed Saadawi | Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013) |
| 🇮🇱 | Israel | Yuval Noah Harari | Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011) |
| 🇯🇵 | Japan | Eiichiro Oda | One Piece, Volume 1: Romance Dawn (1997) |
| 🇰🇼 | Kuwait | Bothayna Al-Essa | The Book Censor's Library (2019) |
| 🇱🇧 | Lebanon | Kahlil Gibran | The Prophet (1923) |
| 🇴🇲 | Oman | Jokha Alharthi | Celestial Bodies (2010) |
| 🇵🇰 | Pakistan | Malala Yousafzai | I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban (2013) |
| 🇵🇭 | Philippines | Samantha Sotto Yambao | Water Moon (2025) |
| 🇸🇬 | Singapore | Kevin Kwan | Lies and Weddings (2024) |
| 🇰🇷 | South Korea | Han Kang | The Vegetarian (2007) |
| 🇱🇰 | Sri Lanka | Vajra Chandrasekera | The Saint of Bright Doors (2023) |
| 🇹🇼 | Taiwan | Yang Shuang-zi | Taiwan Travelogue (2020) |
| 🇹🇷 | Turkey | Elif Shafak | There are Rivers in the Sky (2024) |
| 🇻🇳 | Vietnam | Thich Nhat Hanh | The Miracle of Mindfulness (1975) |
| Flag | Country | Author | Book |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇦🇹 | Austria | Viktor Frankl | Man's Search for Meaning (1946) |
| 🇧🇾 | Belarus | Svetlana Alexievich | Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (2013) |
| 🇧🇪 | Belgium | Jacqueline Harpman | I Who Have Never Known Men (1995) |
| 🇧🇬 | Bulgaria | Georgi Gospodinov | Time Shelter (2020) |
| 🇨🇿 | Czechia | Milan Kundera | The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) |
| 🇩🇰 | Denmark | Jussi Adler-Olsen | The Keeper of Lost Causes (2007) |
| 🇪🇪 | Estonia | Triinu Laan | John the Skeleton (2020) |
| 🇫🇮 | Finland | Tove Jansson | The Summer Book (1972) |
| 🇫🇷 | France | Alexandre Dumas, père | The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) |
| 🇩🇪 | Germany | Leonie Swann | Three Bags Full (2005) |
| 🇬🇷 | Greece | Homer | The Odyssey (c. 700 BCE) |
| 🇭🇺 | Hungary | László Krasznahorkai | Herscht 07769 (2021) |
| 🇮🇸 | Iceland | Ragnar Jonasson | Death at the Sanatorium (2022) |
| 🇮🇪 | Ireland | Sally Rooney | Intermezzo (2024) |
| 🇮🇹 | Italy | Elena Ferrante | My Brilliant Friend (2011) |
| 🇳🇱 | Netherlands | Anne Frank | The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition (1947) |
| 🇳🇴 | Norway | Jo Nesbø | Blood Ties (2024) |
| 🇵🇱 | Poland | Olga Tokarczuk | Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009) |
| 🇵🇹 | Portugal | José Saramago | Blindness (1995) |
| 🇷🇴 | Romania | Mircea Cărtărescu | Solenoid (2015) |
| 🇷🇺 | Russia | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | Crime and Punishment (1866) |
| 🇪🇸 | Spain | Carlos Ruiz Zafón | The Shadow of the Wind (2001) |
| 🇸🇪 | Sweden | Fredrik Backman | My Friends (2025) |
| 🇨🇭 | Switzerland | Marcus Pfister | The Rainbow Fish (1992) |
| 🇬🇧 | United Kingdom | J. K. Rowling | Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1997) |
| Flag | Country | Author | Book |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇦🇬 | Antigua and Barbuda | Jamaica Kincaid | A Small Place (1988) |
| 🇧🇸 | Bahamas | Sidney Poitier | The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (2000) |
| 🇧🇧 | Barbados | Cherie Jones | How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House (2021) |
| 🇨🇦 | Canada | Louise Penny | The Grey Wolf (2024) |
| 🇩🇲 | Dominica | Jean Rhys | Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) |
| 🇯🇲 | Jamaica | Marlon James | Black Leopard, Red Wolf (2019) |
| 🇲🇽 | Mexico | Álvaro Enrigue | You Dreamed of Empires (2022) |
| 🇹🇹 | Trinidad and Tobago | Tracey Baptiste | Minecraft: The Crash: An Official Minecraft Novel (2018) |
| 🇺🇸 | United States | Freida McFadden | The Housemaid (2022) |
| Flag | Country | Author | Book |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇦🇺 | Australia | Liane Moriarty | Here One Moment (2024) |
| 🇫🇯 | Fiji | Nilima Rao | A Disappearance in Fiji (2023) |
| 🇳🇿 | New Zealand | Sarah Wynn-Williams | Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (2025) |
| Flag | Country | Author | Book |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇦🇷 | Argentina | Agustina Bazterrica | Tender Is the Flesh (2017) |
| 🇧🇷 | Brazil | Paulo Coelho | The Alchemist (1988) |
| 🇨🇱 | Chile | Isabel Allende | My Name Is Emilia del Valle (2025) |
| 🇨🇴 | Colombia | Gabriel García Márquez | One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) |
| 🇪🇨 | Ecuador | Mónica Ojeda | Jawbone (2018) |
| 🇬🇾 | Guyana | Walter Rodney | How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) |
| 🇵🇪 | Peru | Mario Vargas Llosa | The Feast of the Goat (2000) |
| 🇺🇾 | Uruguay | Eduardo Galeano | Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (1971) |
| 🇻🇪 | Venezuela | Menena Cottin | The Black Book of Colors (2006) |