https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=429914
--- setup.py
+++ setup.py
@@ -1,10 +1,11 @@
 # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
 
+import codecs
 import os
 from setuptools import setup, find_packages
 
 HERE = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
-long_desc = open(os.path.join(HERE, 'README')).read()
+long_desc = codecs.open(os.path.join(HERE, 'README'), encoding='utf-8').read()
 
 requires = ['Sphinx>=0.6']