Favorite foreign literary writer

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Maxinquaye

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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?
 

Chris P

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I'll assume you mean "non-English language" or I'd be naming off a bunch of British writers.

I can't say I've read very many, especially many modern. Although somewhat old now, I really liked "40 Days of Musa Dagh" by Franz Werfel and "Dr. Zhivago" by Pasternak.

For older stuff of course "War and Peace" is a book I'd take to another planet with me and "Don Quixote" (leaving out the "tale of the ill-advised curiosity") is good. The condensed version of the "Tale of Genji" is worth a look for the sake of saying I've read it, although it can be a struggle to get through (and that's the condensed version!).
 

KTC

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I absolutely love NAGUIB MAHFOUZ. He is absolutely one of my favourite writers. He is Egyptian. His books are incredible and I really love how they do not have Hollywood endings. He is a master at writing personal disaster and the fall of families, etc.

Here's his Wiki page.

The Beginning and the End is my favourite Mahfouz work, but I loved all his works. The Cairo Trilogy is wonderful stuff.
 

firedrake

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Mikhail Sholokov - And Quiet Flows the Don and The Don Flows Home to the Sea

Victor Hugo - Les Miserables although I've heard people say it's more populist fiction than literary.

and, yup, War and Peace
 

maxmordon

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I'll assume you mean "non-English language" or I'd be naming off a bunch of British writers.

Same here, from Chaucer to Gaiman ornament my shelves. Heck, I have more Brits and Yanks!

But anyway, I am fond of Eco, that man could write a phone book and I still would read it from beginning to end, Yukio Mishima is a good one too and of course, Henri Cherriere, writer of Papillion. For me, Papillion is more than an adventure story, it's a self-help book. Just thinking that this man had the endurace to stand that gives me the hope to go on as much as I can.
 

maxmordon

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By the way, Garcia Marquez does a literary festival in Cartagena which my aunt's ex-husband had the luck to go a couple of years ago and tried to shake Gabo's hand, but he was better protected and the kings of Spain!
 

Priene

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I have a thing going with most of the authors in this thread, but you have to add Italo Calvino. And Mikhail Bulgakov. And Hermann Hesse.

Oh, and Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight is ace. As is Ferenc Karinthy's Metropole. The Book of Fathers by Miklós Vámos was pretty good too. These crazy Hungarians....


Edit: And Gunter Grass
Edit: And Orhan Pamuk
Edit: And Primo Levi, but I'm going to stop doing this now, as I need to go back to bed.
 
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DisobedientWriter

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I totally agree with Milan Kundera - Unbearable Lightness of Being and Book of Laughter and Forgetting are my two favorite books of all time. Also anything by Nabokov, Garcia Marquez, Miguel de Unamuno & Jorge Amado.
 

Chris P

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Also anything by Nabokov,

I was going to say "Lolita" but it was first written in English. I tried to read "Glory" but I think I wasn't in the mood for it at that time. I'll pick it up again later, I hope.
 

NewKidOldKid

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Pretty much anything by Julio Cortazar, but his book Hopscotch is amazing. You can actually read it two different ways: like a normal book (from chapter 1 till the end) or by following a jumping pattern the author provides (chapter 1, then 73, then 20, etc.) and you end up with a COMPLETELY different story. Incredible book. Love Jorge Luis Borges as well.
 

Slushie

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I absolutely love NAGUIB MAHFOUZ. He is absolutely one of my favourite writers. He is Egyptian. His books are incredible and I really love how they do not have Hollywood endings. He is a master at writing personal disaster and the fall of families, etc.

Here's his Wiki page.

The Beginning and the End is my favourite Mahfouz work, but I loved all his works. The Cairo Trilogy is wonderful stuff.

I just read the first few pages of Palace Walk and, yeah, great stuff. Seeing as he won the Nobel Lit Prize, I feel stupid for not knowing the name.

http://books.google.com/books?id=7j...over&dq=palace+walk&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

#

As far as non-English language authors go, the first that come to mind are Kafka and Camus.
 

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Besides the names already cited here - Marquez, Kundera, Borges, the Russians [classics] -- I add my favorite, one of the best contemporary novelists in France, Sylvie Germain. Many of her novels (literary), I think all of them, have already been translated in English. She is a powerful writer, imaginative and very intense. When reading some of her paragraphs you need to take a break, take a deep breath then go back to reading. Fantastic element also present in her prose. A couple of titles: The Book of the Nights, Night of Amber, The Medusa Child, Infinite Possibilities, Invitation to a Journey (the last two my favorite) ...

Another French author I like is Bernard du Boucheron, born in 1928. A literary sensation! The most interesting fact about him is that he started writing after his retirement when he was 76, in 2000. Since then, he comes out on the market with one novel a year. Yes, he's over 80 and still writing. Which proves that it can be done at any age!

His novels are short, a touch of fantasy, his style is modern. Also translated in English. His first title is The Voyage of the Short Serpent. About this novel, a reviewer says:
"is an eccentric, slightly maddened and often brutally funny tale of a colony of Roman Catholics marooned in medieval Greenland by the encroachment of a new ice age.
" Full review is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/books/review/Mishan-t.html

I read Herta Muller's The Appointment even before she won the Nobel Prize. I had no idea who she was and I just picked up the book from the shelf, browsed a few pages and liked her style. I was also interested in the topic.

Adagio
 

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oh man, this is the kind of topic that makes a noob leap out of lurkdom (yeah, that would be me).

in my 'reading for fun' i read mostly non-western authors. garcia-marquez's writing is just gorgeous. i also love patricia grace (all of her books), keri hulme--the bone people is *haunting*, albert wendt, sia fiegel, vikram seth, thrity umrigar (is she an american writer now?), vikram chandra, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (yeah, i cut and pasted that name), chinua achebe, witi ihimaera, azadeh moaveni.

there are more but they're not all coming to mind now and its time for me to fade back into lurkdom . . . .
 

Tienci

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I'm a fan of Isabel Allende's "House of the Spirits" and Garcia Marquez's "100 Years of Solitude" also. In addition, I like some of Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman's work ("Hard Rain" aka "Moros en la Costa" and "Blake's Therapy"), and I like Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas' "The Assault."

I'm not American so anyone not of my nationality is foreign to me so I can name some American writers I like but since Americans (and Brits?) are being excluded, to continue:

I remember liking "The Lion and the Jewel" by Wole Soyinka (Nigerian) as a pre-teen.
"Xala" by Ousmane Sembene (Senegalese) was enjoyable.
Johanna Spyri's (Swiss) "Heidi," Zee Edgell's (Belizean) "Beka Lamb" and "The Sound of One Hand Clapping" by Richard Flanagan (Tasmanian/Australian).
Also:
- "Bedside Manners"- Luisa Valenzuela (Argentine)
- "Like Water for Chocolate"- Luisa Esquivel (Mexican)
- "Breath, Eyes, Memory"- Edwidge Danticat (Haitian)
- Paulo Coelho (Brazilian)
- Can I count Yann Martel's "Life of Pi"? He's lived a lot of places :)

My absolute favorite writer is Fyodor Dostoevsky (Russian).

Looks like I need to brush up on my Asian literature; I've covered every other live-able continent! Although I have read Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children," I wouldn't consider it a favorite...
Any recs besides what's listed here? They'll be added to my current queue (including Umberto Eco, Keri Hulme and Gunter Grass).

NewKidOldKid, that "Hopscotch" book sounds brilliant.
 
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dgaughran

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If you like Gabriel Garcia Marques, you should try Louis de Bernieres. Most people know him for Captain Corelli's Mandolin (I think it was Corelli's Mandolin in the US), which was made into an awful movie, but his South American trilogy is great (first book is called The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts). Birds Without Wings is his masterpiece - there are passages which are the finest I have read.

The new Nobel Prize Winner, Mario Vargas Llosa, has a mixed bag of work - by far the best being The Feast of The Goat.

Continuing the Latin American theme, The Dirty Havana Trilogy by Pedro Juan Gutierrez is dark, hilarious, and very, very dirty.

Some Irish writers: A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle, The Dead School by Patrick McCabe and The Dark by John McGahern.

If you are into sick Scottish fiction, I strongly recommend Maribou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh (of Trainspotting fame), and his progenitor, Alasdair Gray (who's novel 1982, Janine will shock the unshockable).

If you fancy a Frenchie, you can't go far wrong with Camus (The Stranger, The Plague, and my favourite, The Fall) and Sartre (my pick The Age of Reason trilogy).

That should take you up to Christmas, when the weather should be countered with some fine Brazilian fiction like Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado or embraced with some Russian miserabilism like The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
 

Jam

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Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Zweig.

i notice only one or two mentions of all the great french, german, russian authors, perhaps they're taken for granted, part of the canon of GWLit

Chinua Achebe

Sarah Banjeree

i second Mahfouz and Murakami, but Mishima is only acceptable in small, homeopathic doses. Eco only ever wrote one readable book, and Allende should not be mentioned in the same breath with Garcia Marquez except to say "not in the same stratosphere, she's a wanna be."
 
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