This list is comprised of countries which are de facto sovereign states and are currently UN member states or UN General Assembly observer states. The bonus prompts listed at the end are of states which are former members of the UN or are member states of a UN Specialized Agency only. 

For the purposes of this challenge, I consider a prompt fulfilled if I read a book (fiction, non-fiction, poetry or drama) by an author who is from a particular country and has spent a substantial period of their life there. (e.g. I would not class a book by an Irish-born person who emigrated permanently from Ireland as a toddler as fulfilling the 'Ireland' prompt; I would not class a book by a British person who's spent many years living in India as fulfilling the 'India' prompt.)