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I was reading "One hundred years of solitude" by Marquez, and I got to think how internationally eclectic I am with my literary reading. Well, it's a given coming from a small language background - if you read a lot then you have to read foreign writers translated into swedish or english.
I'm a bit of a sucker for spanish language writers like Marquez. I just love the opening for "One hundred years of solitude". You can read the first pages there.
"Many years later as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a vilage of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which where white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. [...]"
And then it goes on, a sort of rambling opening like that, for one and a half page. And I like it. I shouldn't but I do. It's just so different from the local style, and many spanish language writers write like this I've found. Another example is Isabel Allende. You can read the first pages of "The house of the Spirits" there. It's the same style.
So, fill us in, what foreign writers do you like?
I'm a bit of a sucker for spanish language writers like Marquez. I just love the opening for "One hundred years of solitude". You can read the first pages there.
"Many years later as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a vilage of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which where white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. [...]"
And then it goes on, a sort of rambling opening like that, for one and a half page. And I like it. I shouldn't but I do. It's just so different from the local style, and many spanish language writers write like this I've found. Another example is Isabel Allende. You can read the first pages of "The house of the Spirits" there. It's the same style.
So, fill us in, what foreign writers do you like?