Favourite books from your country (or in your language)

[Cosi bel do]

The recent discussion with North Star about Finnish literature (in the last readings topic) made me think of this topic. Because it is, in the end, frankly quite difficult to really know about other literary traditions, I guess it would be interesting if we shared what we prefer from "our" literatures.

So, only books from your country or language, but I leave you with defining more precisely what is the most relevant perimeter. I guess an American would not necessarily consider British literature as part of "his" national culture, but an Irish fellow might dislike James Joyce and feel more inclined towards Shakespeare for instance. And of course you can feel personal attachment to more than one country, or you can like an author who was only naturalized (you can feel Nabokov is Russian and like him as a Russian, or feel he is American and like him as an American).
It's essentially your choice then, but just please try to avoid making of this topic a simple "my favourite books" topic, because the whole point is about discovery, so I don't think it is interesting if everyone answers "Crime and Punishment"

Also you can say 3, 5, 10 titles, again, your choice.
And not necessarily fiction !

[Karl Henning]

John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor
T. Coraghessan Boyle, Water Music
T. Coraghessan Boyle, World's End
Don De Lillo, White Noise
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance
Washington Irving, Tales of a Traveller
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The Whale
Robert Sheckley, Dramocles: An Inter-Galactic Soap Opera
John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

[Brian]

Since the United States is a big country, I will narrow my list down to my birth state, Indiana.

• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., the satirical novelist and pacifist icon, is of course from Indiana. Indiana state identity is a major part of his novels Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, although both those books are more importantly full of social criticism and humor and other things more important than Hoosiers. The short stories are often essential.
• Jean Shepherd is a humorist and comic storyteller who for a very long time had an underground radio show. You might hear his vocals on the Mingus album The Clown, or hear him as the narrator to the famous film A Christmas Story, which he wrote. That film was based on two of his books of short stories, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories, both of which are essential for anyone who wants to laugh at the cultural absurdities of the American Midwest. The latter, especially, is noteworthy for the title story, which is a description of everything that can go wrong at an American school dance. Shepherd is my personal favorite, both because he successfully captures my home state's modest virtues (and virtuous modesty!), and because he is very funny. He also has a gift for making ordinary, everyday events and details seem remarkable.
• John Hay, author and memoirist, had a noteworthy career in public service, beginning as personal secretary to Abraham Lincoln and ultimately becoming a member of Theodore Roosevelt's cabinet. Illness prevented Hay from continuing as Secretary of State, leaving Roosevelt himself to broker an end to the Russo-Japanese War (and win a Nobel Peace Prize).
• Rex Stout wrote a series of enjoyable murder mystery stories featuring Nero Wolfe, a snobbish, antisocial version of Falstaff who solves crimes while sitting in his house, eating compulsively. Not for the serious-minded, but fun. Also a TV series with an acting troupe - that is, the same dozen actors portray different characters every week. Nero Wolfe lives in New York, I think, and nothing in Stout's work suggests Indiana.

John Green, an Indianapolis native, recently has become famous for his books for teenagers, most famously The Fault in Our Stars, a melodrama about cancer victims falling in love.

I can do a different list for the area where I reside - Texas.

[Karl Henning]

I need to read some Rex Stout.

[Brian]

I need to read some Rex Stout.

Those books really are a lot of fun.

[DaveF]

(No other possibility on his centenary.)

[Cosi bel do]

So, a little French literature :

- André Malraux, La condition humaine (Man's Fate), 1933

This novel left me a strong impression since I read it when I was 16. Malraux was quite a character (an infatuated writer in the 30s, he was convicted for art trafficking in Cambodgia, organized a planes squadron for Republicans during the Spanish civil war, then became Gaullist during the war and ended ministry of culture under De Gaulle, writing mostly rich and weird books about art). He wrote this book about Chinese 1927 revolution without ever setting foot in Shanghai. It is a dense novel about a revolutionary group of communist idealists, and how they are crushed by history...

- Joseph Kessel, Les cavaliers (The Horsemen), 1967

An epic journey in Afghanistan, it is not really widely read in France anymore, and even less in foreign countries (and might be better known for having inspired a 2-hours long Hollywood movie by John Frankenheimer). Still, it is a wonderful novel, the kind of story you cannot forget, a contemporary and cruel Odyssey. Kessel was a kind of French Hemingway, and mainly known for his entertaining novel Le lion, a classic in French middle schools.

- Gustave Flaubert, L'éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education), 1869

Flaubert might be the greatest French writer ever, but it is a mistake to start with Madame Bovary, a masterpiece but not really representative of his author. His other novels give a more immediate pleasure, and Sentimental Education is the best Bildungsroman I know, not at all a sentimental novel (!) but packed with tension, action, arts and politics, as the story goes through 27 years among the most agitated in French history.

- Stendhal, Lucien Leuwen , 1835

I could have cited Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) or La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839). But I think I had even more pleasure reading Lucien Leuwen, for at least two reasons. First, as it is not as well-known as these 2 other novels, I did not know anything about it before starting, which enhanced the pleasure. Second, it is longer, and this is a good reason, as the main issue with Stendhal is you'd like it to keep going on and on and on...

Other writers and novels among my favourites would be :
- Proust of course, I've read the first novels of La Recherche twice, but not finished it yet... A pleasure one should not deprive himself of...
- Louis Aragon (for his novels more than his poetry, Les Voyageurs de l'impériale is superb),
- Émile Zola (among the Rougon-Macquart saga, La Conquête de Plassans is among the novels I had most pleasure reading ; La Terre also, but it is really harsh and cruel),
- Albert Cohen (his 4 novels saga Les Valeureux is a great masterpiece, with Belle du seigneur its better known part),
- J.M.G. Le Clézio : his Nobel is, imho, one of the better deserved of the last decade (with Vargas Llosa's), Désert (Desert) and Le chercheur d'or (The prospector) are really incredibly rich novels (Modiano's prize has been better celebrated, but I don't care as much for him),
- and also page turners as Alexandre Dumas's Count of Monte Cristo and others...

I don't read much poetry, but I count Mallarmé and Paul Éluard among my favourites (and the unavoidable Rimbaud and Verlaine).

[Cosi bel do]

Since the United States is a big country, I will narrow my list down to my birth state, Indiana.

• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., the satirical novelist and pacifist icon, is of course from Indiana. Indiana state identity is a major part of his novels Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, although both those books are more importantly full of social criticism and humor and other things more important than Hoosiers. The short stories are often essential.
• Jean Shepherd is a humorist and comic storyteller who for a very long time had an underground radio show. You might hear his vocals on the Mingus album The Clown, or hear him as the narrator to the famous film A Christmas Story, which he wrote. That film was based on two of his books of short stories, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories, both of which are essential for anyone who wants to laugh at the cultural absurdities of the American Midwest. The latter, especially, is noteworthy for the title story, which is a description of everything that can go wrong at an American school dance. Shepherd is my personal favorite, both because he successfully captures my home state's modest virtues (and virtuous modesty!), and because he is very funny. He also has a gift for making ordinary, everyday events and details seem remarkable.
• John Hay, author and memoirist, had a noteworthy career in public service, beginning as personal secretary to Abraham Lincoln and ultimately becoming a member of Theodore Roosevelt's cabinet. Illness prevented Hay from continuing as Secretary of State, leaving Roosevelt himself to broker an end to the Russo-Japanese War (and win a Nobel Peace Prize).
• Rex Stout wrote a series of enjoyable murder mystery stories featuring Nero Wolfe, a snobbish, antisocial version of Falstaff who solves crimes while sitting in his house, eating compulsively. Not for the serious-minded, but fun. Also a TV series with an acting troupe - that is, the same dozen actors portray different characters every week. Nero Wolfe lives in New York, I think, and nothing in Stout's work suggests Indiana.

John Green, an Indianapolis native, recently has become famous for his books for teenagers, most famously The Fault in Our Stars, a melodrama about cancer victims falling in love.

I can do a different list for the area where I reside - Texas.

Indiana literature, interesting

The only one I've read among those is Vonnegut, and I've only read Slaughterhouse-Five (interesting, a little simpler I expected, but still great). I intend to read Breakfast of Champions one of these days, but I'll give a try to the short stories too.
Rex Stout, I'll try that also.

[North Star]

Kalevala (English translation in Project Gutenberg for free)
Aleksis Kivi - Seven Brothers
Minna Canth - Työmiehen Vaimo, Anna Liisa, Kauppa-Lopo (naturalistic, feminist 19th century stuff)
Väinö Linna - Tuntematon Sotilas (The Unknown Soldier) WWII stuff, iconic depictions of an imaginary machine gun company
Veijo Meri - The Manilla Rope

And I really should read Frans Eemil Sillanpää's and Mika Waltari's work.
Oh, and there's some poetry (Eino Leino,  V. A. Koskenniemi, L. Onerva, Aaro Hellaakoski, Edith Södergran, Paavo Haavikko, Aila Meriluoto, Pentti Saarikoski) I should read (more), too.

[North Star]

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The Whale

Do you know The Scarlet Letter, Karl, and if so, what do you think of it? (I haven't read it myself)
I definitely want to hunt down (a copy of) Moby-Dick soon.

Since the United States is a big country, I will narrow my list down to my birth state, Indiana.

• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., the satirical novelist and pacifist icon, is of course from Indiana. Indiana state identity is a major part of his novels Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, although both those books are more importantly full of social criticism and humor and other things more important than Hoosiers. The short stories are often essential.[/i]

No mention of Slaughterhouse 5, Brian? That's currently waiting in my shopping basket..

[Cosi bel do]

Don De Lillo, White Noise

Did you read Underworld ? I think it might be the greatest masterpiece of these last 20 or 30 years. I liked White Noise, but was less deeply impressed.

[Brian]

Indiana literature, interesting

The only one I've read among those is Vonnegut, and I've only read Slaughterhouse-Five (interesting, a little simpler I expected, but still great). I intend to read Breakfast of Champions one of these days, but I'll give a try to the short stories too.
Rex Stout, I'll try that also.

Interesting that you say Slaughterhouse-Five is "a little simpler I expected". Simplicity was essential to Vonnegut's art; he wanted to say what he meant, spell out his messages, and tell straightforward stories, but still to do this in an artistic and interesting way.

No mention of Slaughterhouse 5, Brian? That's currently waiting in my shopping basket..

Probably the best book ever written by an Indiana native!

[Gurn Blanston]

I would sooner say authors than books, because for all of my favorite American authors, I've read the complete works of:

Top 5 -
Kurt Vonnegut
Mark Twain
Rex Stout
Larry McMurtry
Michael Connelly

[North Star]

I would sooner say authors than books, because for all of my favorite American authors, I've read the complete works of:

And none of the books stands out particularly?  0:)

[Brian]

I would sooner say authors than books, because for all of my favorite American authors, I've read the complete works of:
Kurt Vonnegut
Rex Stout

Wow, you're really an Indiana devotee!!

[Gurn Blanston]

And none of the books stands out particularly?  0:)

I'm like that; if I like an author's style, I like everything they write. Music too...

I would sooner say authors than books, because for all of my favorite American authors, I've read the complete works of:

Top 5 -
Kurt Vonnegut  -  Breakfast of Champions
Mark Twain      -   The Innocents Abroad
Rex Stout        -   The Doorbell Rang
Larry McMurtry -  Lonesome Dove
Michael Connelly  The Concrete Blonde

Although narrowing loses so much....

[Gurn Blanston]

Wow, you're really an Indiana devotee!!

Yes, I can't honestly say 'I never heard of any good elements coming from Indiana...'  (The Outlaw Josey Wales)

[Drasko]

Borislav Pekić - The New Jerusalem
Radomir Konstantinović - Philosophy of the small town
Danilo Kiš - A Tomb for Boris Davidovich
Meša Selimović - Death and the Dervish
Vasko Popa - Poetry
Ivo Andrić - Travnik Chronicles
Ljubomir Micić - Zenith
Svetislav Basara - The Cyclist Conspiracy
Jovan Dučić - Poetry

I've given the titles in English  but what actually has been translated, and how, I don't know.

[North Star]

Probably the best book ever written by an Indiana native!

Sounds very prestigious, dividing the USA into individual states for a statement like this

I'm like that; if I like an author's style, I like everything they write. Music too...         Although narrowing loses so much....      

Cheers!
Yes, I know how it is, of course, but if someone wants a place to start, listing all of Bach's cantatas or Haydn's symphonies might not be the best help. 

[Cosi bel do]

Interesting that you say Slaughterhouse-Five is "a little simpler I expected". Simplicity was essential to Vonnegut's art; he wanted to say what he meant, spell out his messages, and tell straightforward stories, but still to do this in an artistic and interesting way.

Probably the best book ever written by an Indiana native!

Yes and this "simpler than expected" impression was not at all a negative remark !