The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil. Set in pre WWI Vienna. It’s a three volume unfinished novel full of brilliant writing, much of which should appeal to the crowd here.
And Heimito von Doderer.
His stories, novellas. The Last Adventure.
But, as introduction or a summary of a Fin de siecle Vienna that was a progenitor of XXth century and "proving ground for the destruction of the world", start with
Allan Janik, Wittgenstein: Vienna Revisited. Wonderfully succint and comprehensive overview.
I loved this book. Everyone has a different opinion on what the best translation is, so it’s worth briefly scanning a few different ones to see which you like best. I had a really hard time getting into the Ginsburg translation, but really enjoyed the Pevear/Volokhonsky one.
Also, this site: http://masterandmargarita.eu/en/ is a great resource if you’re not familiar with 1930s Soviet history and the Gospels (both canonical and apocryphal). Without knowledge of those things you won’t get nearly as much out of the book as you could.
If you haven't, the 2008 Hugh Aplin translation is worth checking out. I found it made for a bit easier/more casual reading than the sometimes stuffy P/V, which lets the situational humor and the playfulness of the language come through a lot more naturally.
I like the Burgin and O'Connor translation, personally.
They have a postscript per chapter about "all the references you probably missed", but don't add distracting markup to the text itself to call them out. It's a nice balance, and the language is pretty good.
Anything by Bulgakov really. Heart of a Dog is fantastic too. If you like your Russian literature surrealist then Daniil Kharms is worth seeking out, and of course you can go back to the master: Gogol, and his Nose (quick plug, I produced a PD collection of Gogol shorts for SE: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/nikolai-gogol/short-fictio... )
"Epitaph Of A Small Winner" and "Dom Casmurro" by Machado de Assis. He's written a great many other books besides those, but they're the best of the bunch. In Brazil he's a national hero, but while much of his work is available in English it's astoundingly under-appreciated.
I love some foreign authors like Murakami, but I always wonder what I'm losing in the translation and how much is the translator impacting the writing.
Agreed. There are multiple translations of de Assis's major works into English, and they are remarkably dissimilar, so that is a hint right there as to how the translation process is itself an art form. (My tastes guide me to the earlier translations, which are slightly less forensically precise but far more readable and musical to the ear.)
Without question. I have also read books in several different translations and it is remarkable how different they can be from each other. In his notes, one translator said there is no such thing as "translating" a book from one language to another, what you are really doing is rewriting the book in another language.
For what it’s worth, I have a friend who is a native speaker of Japanese and a fluent English speaker of 40 years, who loves Murakami and has read a number of his books in both English and Japanese. She says the translations are spot on and extremely well done.
Haruki murakami is also fluent in English (he lived in Boston area for years) and is very involved in his books ranslations into English. I have no idea about his translations into other languages.
I’ve read all his books in English. I’m a big fan of his fiction but not crazy about his non fiction.
Who Has Seen the Wind by W.O. Mitchell is a novel that was required reading in Canada for generations, but it is almost completely unknown in the United States. I don't know if it is a "great" book (I have not read it myself), but many Canadians consider it a classic of Canadian literature.
Basically everything by Buzzati is awesome and virtually unknown to foreigners.
I would suggest a short story collection though, like "sessanta racconti".
The question was "What are some great books that are relatively unknown in the United States?"
Although certain 1984 memes (like "Big Brother") are well-known, the book itself is not. Most Americans, if they've read any Orwell, have only read Animal Farm; and other concepts from 1984 (the memory hole, two minutes hate) are completely unheard of... again, because the book is not actually well-known.
Yes. Despite having a shared language, many U.K. books are not widely read in the U.S. Authors like P.G. Wodehouse and Georgette Heyer are considered a bit niche in the U.S.
Others:
- Enid Blyton's children books - Five Find Outers, Secret Seven, Malory Towers etc.
- C.S. Forester - Horatio Hornblower series
Non-English authors:
- Georges Simenon - Inspector Maigret series (French detective genre)
Some foreign authors whose popularity is rising in the U.S. at the moment
- Elena Ferrante (Italian)
- Karl Ove Knausgaard (Norwegian)
On a related note, Wikipedia has a more comprehensive list of best-selling world authors [1]. Ironically many of top writers in the English language aren't widely read in America.
Usually not into fantasy, but La Horde du Contrevent is a French fantasy classic, written by Alain Damasio, which was published in 2004. He went later on to collaborate on a few games that might be more known in the US (Life Is Strange, Remember Me). Damasio has a creative use of the language, but which must then make it hellish to translate into any other language. According to Wikipedia, it has only been translated in Italian.
Explains how taxing land instead of labour is the path to a far better world. Versus now where progress means higher land prices which means poverty for those excluded from land.
Once nearly got to be mayor of New York. Sold 6 million copies (at the time only the bible outsold it).
From where I stand, Hispanic and Slavic literature is fairly unknown and underrated on the other side of the pond.
Ramón del Valle Inclán's "Lights of Bohemia": A great portrait of Madrid and the dirty guts of the Spain from 100 years ago, written in a gorgeously precise, dark and multifaceted range of vocabulary.
Ortega y Gasset's "Rebellion of the Masses". It is centered in the individual "I am me and my circumstances" and its evolution since the enlightenment.
Sapkowski's "Witcher". Look for a good translation, lots of Slavic mythology tidbits and wonderfully juicy curse words.
Stanislaw Lem's "The Star Diaries". Nice if you like to fantasize about buying pieces for your spaceship in a shopping centre or think about chair-like aliens with 11 different sexes (in the book).
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "A hundred years of solitude". The book is all about "realismo fantástico", joining the real and imaginary words in an unforgettable blend.
I guess it boils down to the lack of accurate translations. As a certain Jarosław Grzędowicz put answering a question why his works haven't been translated yet(paraphrased):
English native speakers in general are not too fond of translations not done by other English native speakers. Unfortunately there aren't many English native speakers who happen to be experts in Polish literature. On top of that all four of them are lumberjacks.
Can you please provide more examples of Slavic literature? I am only aware of Russian authors. Any idea if the english translation of Witcher by Danusia Stok is good? I am very curious about Slavic culture and recently blogged about "Slavs"[1], I would love to add a literature section to my post.
Other than that, Czeslaw Milosz for the poetry, Henryk Sienkiewicz has some great novels about the history of Poland (The Trilogy and The Teutonic Knights are damn hooking and intense), Zofia Kossak Szczucka (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zofia_Kossak-Szczucka) is another solid historical writer. I am aware however that my tastes in literature are somewhat eclectic.
Russian Lit: Nikolai Gogol for the stories, Solzhenitsyn for the Gulag Archipelago, and of course War and Peace (Tolstoy) and Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky). Reserve some weeks for the last two though, heh ;)
Any help you need, just shoot me an email (in the profile), but I'm not an expert by any means :P
I think Leo Tolstoy might be fairly well known in the US due to "War and Peace" and, possibly, "Anna Karenina". But his nonfiction or autobiographical works deserve attention as well. I would highlight two of these:
"The Kingdom of God is Within you" -- I think Mahatma Gandhi considered this to be one of the three most influential books for his philofophy of "nonviolent resistence". Even though Tolstoy was already considered a literary genius in his country, the Russian czar initially banned this book due to negative imagery of the Russian church. So I think it was first published in Germany or elsewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingdom_of_God_Is_Within_Y...
"A Confession" -- a short book that is somewhat related to the previous one; depicts young Tolstoy's "search for the meaning of life" (or, God). It had a huge impact on me (even though I read it first being 30+). This would be among my first recommendations for books to read when you're 20.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confession
These are harder because I feel like they’re all pretty well known, but maybe they’re not actually read. Like, known bc people have heard the name, but are not read as much anymore.
* Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
* Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
* Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Actually unknown (but super good) domestic:
* Stuff by Larry McMurtry (only famous for lonesome dove)
Also noteworthy, from Georges Perec: A Void (La Disparition), which was written entirely without using the letter "e" (and which the translation reproduces brilliantly well).
That book is incredible and made me feel uneducated. There are so many references and jokes in that book to historical events, other books, etc. I knew enough to realize how much of that book was going right over my head.
Seconded. They are excellent. I must re-read them.
Water Margin[0] came to UK on TV in the early 80s from Japanese TV. Gained quite a following.
Journey to the West came to the UK as Monkey[1] (again a Japanese adaptation) around the same time. It was the most ridiculous, weird thing on TV. Most people at school were addicted to it. It became a cult classic. Sadly Saiyuki 2 never made it to the UK.
I think it’s interesting because even when a person outside of China is exposed to them, they might not realise the influence. Close to a million people a day play Dota 2 but I doubt they know that the Monkey King (https://youtube.com/watch?v=guGFT27SavM) is the main character of Journey to the West.
About these 4 books, are there any translations or Kindle versions you recommend?
I'm currently reading Water Margin which was translated to English by the Foreign Language Press[0]. Although very simplified in tone and diction, the translation is still amazing and it comes in four volumes as well so it's around 2000 pages of text.
Written in 1030's by a Slovenian, it's a historical fiction novel set in the in 11th century what is now Iran. It tells the story of how a radical leader of an Islamic faction, based in the impenetrable mountain fortress "Alamut", manipulates young men into perfect obedience and turns them against his enemies through the use of drugs and a fake paradise full of women purporting to be heaven.
It is also one of the major inspirations for the Assassin's Creed series of games.
Candide by Voltairre , really short drama, funny with a really unique point of view of pestilence.
Confessions by Rousseau, superb biography of an amazing life.
Zeno's conscience, a psycho analysts novel with a different point of view.
That was an surprising thing to see listed here. A couple of years ago my Finnish wife gave me a copy, and she later followed up with "The Adventurer", & "The Wanderer" (each in their English translations).
They were fascinating reads, although I was a little disappointed at how hapless the main character was. He bumbles around while stuff keeps happening "nearby", I guess that's kinda the point. It is all about the journey.
Francis Spufford is a brilliant English author who should be more widely known.
For the HN crowd I would heartily recommend "Red Plenty" (2010). It's a semi-fictional novel about that brief moment in time around 1959 when the Soviets really thought that the dream of Communism was within reach.
The characters (most of them real people) include mathematicians, biologists, party officials, computer designers... There's probably no other novel that could afford to spend so many pages on discussing linear optimization and centralized economic planning without sacrificing the emotional narrative. I can't recommend it enough.
And if you're looking for something outrageously creative and courageously insane go buy a copy of "the incal" which is his graphic novel collaboration with Alejandro Jodorowsky
It's not just those two. Most French/Belgian comics [1] are unknown in the US. There have been tons of talented newcomers since the 1990s, and some cursory Googling suggests me that most are not translated to English yet. (Some are available in German.)
I would say European and south American comics are mostly unknown in the US.
L'incal, Corto Maltese, Mafalda, El Eternauta... There is a whole world which is distinctly different from the mainstream American style and manga/manwa, and very interesting.
There was magazine, called Heavy Metal, that published in the US european comics from the french Metal Hurlant magazine (Moebius, Enki Bilal, Corben, Milo Manara...).
The drawings / illustrations in Asterix and Tintin comics are just great. I like them almost more than the stories or characters, especially for the Asterix ones. The drawings of scenery are very evocative, and expressions on the faces of the people in the comics seem very realistic, despite being drawn with just a few lines, relatively speaking.
Another great point about Asterix comics (so I read), is that they were initially written in French, and later translated into English (I've only read them in English) - and still there are many puns and word plays in the English versions. I don't know how they managed to do it, or whether they created different puns for the English versions. Likely the latter, because I guess the puns would not translate well across languages.
Yes, crazy kinds of adventures. Things or issues that seem impossible to solve, yet they (Tintin, Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus) come out of them successfully most of the time, not to mention Thomson and Thompson :)
I've never seen Asterix in English and just checked the Wikipedia page you linked.
I was wondering how they translated the characters' names. Since the chief is Vitalstatistix, then it must be good. Nothing to do with the French name but still funny.
"The Long Ships" by Frans G. Bengtsson. It's a wonderful, humorous adventure tale about the life of a viking.
I'd also just suggest you browse the New York Review Books collection. They put a lot of effort into reviving this kind of literature in translation, as well as digging up forgotten American gems.
Upvoted for NYRB. They're like the Criterion Collection of litfic at this point -- they find good stuff that's been out of print for too long, reissue it, bring it back to an audience that deserves to know about it. They recently reissued another long-out-of-print favorite, "Berlin Alexanderplatz", in a new translation.
174 comments
[ 7.0 ms ] story [ 236 ms ] threadBut, as introduction or a summary of a Fin de siecle Vienna that was a progenitor of XXth century and "proving ground for the destruction of the world", start with Allan Janik, Wittgenstein: Vienna Revisited. Wonderfully succint and comprehensive overview.
And of course the (sort-of) French equivalent about life in modern times: In search of lost time.
Read him? The numbers start to thin out.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita
Also, this site: http://masterandmargarita.eu/en/ is a great resource if you’re not familiar with 1930s Soviet history and the Gospels (both canonical and apocryphal). Without knowledge of those things you won’t get nearly as much out of the book as you could.
They have a postscript per chapter about "all the references you probably missed", but don't add distracting markup to the text itself to call them out. It's a nice balance, and the language is pretty good.
Without question. I have also read books in several different translations and it is remarkable how different they can be from each other. In his notes, one translator said there is no such thing as "translating" a book from one language to another, what you are really doing is rewriting the book in another language.
I’ve read all his books in English. I’m a big fan of his fiction but not crazy about his non fiction.
Also, on the technical side (sorry I couldn't resist), CTM https://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/book.html is really underrated.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sessanta_racconti
It's up there with the best Asimov or Calvino or Borges: simple brilliant ideas, perfect execution.
And yes, CTM is awesome too!
Although certain 1984 memes (like "Big Brother") are well-known, the book itself is not. Most Americans, if they've read any Orwell, have only read Animal Farm; and other concepts from 1984 (the memory hole, two minutes hate) are completely unheard of... again, because the book is not actually well-known.
Surprisingly, not only ethnoses have an age, but their growth, development and aging follows a fairly common trajectory.
Others:
- Enid Blyton's children books - Five Find Outers, Secret Seven, Malory Towers etc.
- C.S. Forester - Horatio Hornblower series
Non-English authors:
- Georges Simenon - Inspector Maigret series (French detective genre)
- Sigrid Undset - Kristin Lavransdatter (Scandinavian)
Some foreign authors whose popularity is rising in the U.S. at the moment
- Elena Ferrante (Italian)
- Karl Ove Knausgaard (Norwegian)
On a related note, Wikipedia has a more comprehensive list of best-selling world authors [1]. Ironically many of top writers in the English language aren't widely read in America.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_a...
Explains how taxing land instead of labour is the path to a far better world. Versus now where progress means higher land prices which means poverty for those excluded from land.
Once nearly got to be mayor of New York. Sold 6 million copies (at the time only the bible outsold it).
https://www.aier.org/article/amazing-influence-henry-george-...
As recommended by Albert Einstein and many others.
Ramón del Valle Inclán's "Lights of Bohemia": A great portrait of Madrid and the dirty guts of the Spain from 100 years ago, written in a gorgeously precise, dark and multifaceted range of vocabulary.
Ortega y Gasset's "Rebellion of the Masses". It is centered in the individual "I am me and my circumstances" and its evolution since the enlightenment.
Sapkowski's "Witcher". Look for a good translation, lots of Slavic mythology tidbits and wonderfully juicy curse words.
Stanislaw Lem's "The Star Diaries". Nice if you like to fantasize about buying pieces for your spaceship in a shopping centre or think about chair-like aliens with 11 different sexes (in the book).
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "A hundred years of solitude". The book is all about "realismo fantástico", joining the real and imaginary words in an unforgettable blend.
English native speakers in general are not too fond of translations not done by other English native speakers. Unfortunately there aren't many English native speakers who happen to be experts in Polish literature. On top of that all four of them are lumberjacks.
Isabel Allende also enjoyed a period of brief popularity in the U.S. (for House of Spirits).
[1] https://raviramanujam.com/post/blog/slavs.html
I usually find poetry self-adoring and usually completely unreadable by what I read of Szymborska was feeric.
I've just doublechecked that the official English translation is good indeed, I haven't got first hand knowledge though https://www.quora.com/I-intend-to-read-the-Witcher-books-but...
My knowledge of Slavic literature limits mostly to the Polish and some Russian authors, despite that I can recommend a Czech satire book that I liked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk
Other than that, Czeslaw Milosz for the poetry, Henryk Sienkiewicz has some great novels about the history of Poland (The Trilogy and The Teutonic Knights are damn hooking and intense), Zofia Kossak Szczucka (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zofia_Kossak-Szczucka) is another solid historical writer. I am aware however that my tastes in literature are somewhat eclectic.
Russian Lit: Nikolai Gogol for the stories, Solzhenitsyn for the Gulag Archipelago, and of course War and Peace (Tolstoy) and Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky). Reserve some weeks for the last two though, heh ;)
Any help you need, just shoot me an email (in the profile), but I'm not an expert by any means :P
"The Kingdom of God is Within you" -- I think Mahatma Gandhi considered this to be one of the three most influential books for his philofophy of "nonviolent resistence". Even though Tolstoy was already considered a literary genius in his country, the Russian czar initially banned this book due to negative imagery of the Russian church. So I think it was first published in Germany or elsewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingdom_of_God_Is_Within_Y...
"A Confession" -- a short book that is somewhat related to the previous one; depicts young Tolstoy's "search for the meaning of life" (or, God). It had a huge impact on me (even though I read it first being 30+). This would be among my first recommendations for books to read when you're 20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confession
Also, this might give some more context to understand Tolstoy's nonfiction: https://libertarianchristians.com/2010/07/09/leo-tolstoy-aga...
* Life: a users manual by George s Perec.
* Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal
* Auto-da-fe by Elias Canetti
Domestic:
These are harder because I feel like they’re all pretty well known, but maybe they’re not actually read. Like, known bc people have heard the name, but are not read as much anymore.
* Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
* Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
* Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Actually unknown (but super good) domestic:
* Stuff by Larry McMurtry (only famous for lonesome dove)
Specifically:
Water Margin
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Journey to the West
Dream of the Red Chamber
They are referenced in everything in asian media and there a bajillion tv/movie adaptations of them but they are relatively unknown in the west.
Water Margin[0] came to UK on TV in the early 80s from Japanese TV. Gained quite a following.
Journey to the West came to the UK as Monkey[1] (again a Japanese adaptation) around the same time. It was the most ridiculous, weird thing on TV. Most people at school were addicted to it. It became a cult classic. Sadly Saiyuki 2 never made it to the UK.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water_Margin_(1973_TV_seri... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_(TV_series)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey:_Journey_to_the_West
About these 4 books, are there any translations or Kindle versions you recommend?
[0]http://www.flp.com.cn/en/
Written in 1030's by a Slovenian, it's a historical fiction novel set in the in 11th century what is now Iran. It tells the story of how a radical leader of an Islamic faction, based in the impenetrable mountain fortress "Alamut", manipulates young men into perfect obedience and turns them against his enemies through the use of drugs and a fake paradise full of women purporting to be heaven.
It is also one of the major inspirations for the Assassin's Creed series of games.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Egyptian
They were fascinating reads, although I was a little disappointed at how hapless the main character was. He bumbles around while stuff keeps happening "nearby", I guess that's kinda the point. It is all about the journey.
For the HN crowd I would heartily recommend "Red Plenty" (2010). It's a semi-fictional novel about that brief moment in time around 1959 when the Soviets really thought that the dream of Communism was within reach.
The characters (most of them real people) include mathematicians, biologists, party officials, computer designers... There's probably no other novel that could afford to spend so many pages on discussing linear optimization and centralized economic planning without sacrificing the emotional narrative. I can't recommend it enough.
Asterix comics [1]
Tintin comics [2]
Yes, I know Spielberg's Tintin animated movie is well known but I doubt most people in the US have heard of the entire series of Tintin comics.
I couldn't devour these fast enough when I was growing up.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3...
You mean the Moebius of the Moebius strip?
Great primer
http://www.tcj.com/jean-moebius-giraud-1938-2012/
Great collection of his awe inspiring art and a short film
https://www.rabbleboy.com/the-amazing-art-of-moebius-jean-gi...
And if you're looking for something outrageously creative and courageously insane go buy a copy of "the incal" which is his graphic novel collaboration with Alejandro Jodorowsky
https://www.google.com/search?q=pif+and+hercule
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Belgian_comics
Even more interesting is how much inspiration a certain George Lucas seem to have drawn from them:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/07/30/are-the-valrian-and-l...
He also authored a black humor series for adults really worth reading.
Another great point about Asterix comics (so I read), is that they were initially written in French, and later translated into English (I've only read them in English) - and still there are many puns and word plays in the English versions. I don't know how they managed to do it, or whether they created different puns for the English versions. Likely the latter, because I guess the puns would not translate well across languages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix
I was wondering how they translated the characters' names. Since the chief is Vitalstatistix, then it must be good. Nothing to do with the French name but still funny.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogmatix
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Asterix_characters
I'd also just suggest you browse the New York Review Books collection. They put a lot of effort into reviving this kind of literature in translation, as well as digging up forgotten American gems.
https://www.nyrb.com/
I had read translations of his works in russian and after immigrating to Canada, was surprised to know that nobody had ever heard of him here.
A real gem if you enjoy the likes of 'of mice and men'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London