Favourite books from your country (or in your language)

[Cosi bel do]

SWEDEN

Hjalmar Söderberg - Doctor Glas



Sweden is "culturally challenged" to say the least, but I think this book can compete internationally (almost).

Söderberg was always excellent at pinpointing feelings of loss, disgust and anguish in dealing with destiny, love and death.

Doctor Glas is his best and quite a quick read. It's thematically dark, but very "light on its feet" in style. It's brutally honest about the horrors of life, but is written beautifully, as though beauty justifies it all.

Why "culturally challenged" ? It is certainly not what I would have thought of Sweden.
I'll try to find Dr. Glas, there is apparently a French translation.

Crime and Punishment hahaha. Actually it is my favourite novel but I am British so can't include it.

I'm sure we could have an entire topic on Russian literature

Shakespeare 'The Tempest', 'King Lear'

Mmm... "What is your favourite Shakespeare play", that would be a nice discussion too.

Oh boy! You might have never heard about these names...

Here are some classics of the Romanian literature which Florestan endorses

Poems

Vasile Alecsandri  - Poems

Mihai Eminescu -Poems

George Coșbuc - Poems

Dramas

Ion Luca Caragiale - The Lost Letter

Ion Luca Caragiale - Mr. Leonida Faces the Reaction

Ion Luca Caragiale - A Stormy Night

Novels

Camil Petrescu - The Last Night of Love, the First Night of War

George Calinescu - Otilia´s Enigma

Mateiu I. Caragiale  - The Old Court Libertines  (very approximate English translation)

If interested, please ask me more.

Eminescu is very famous, among the names you cited. There is a statue of him not far from my home.



I'd like to read something of him, but French translations are out of print, and I'm not sure they are good anyway...

Except Cioran and Eliade, in French, Panaït Istrati is widely available and well-known.
Herta Müller, 2009 Nobel prize winner, is a Romanian who writes in German, mainly about life under Ceausescu.
Also, I bought one or two novels by Norman Manea a couple years back, but never found the time to read it yet. He is the only contemporary Romanian writer I see regularly in bookshops.
I don't know if you have anything to say about them.

[North Star]

Sweden is "culturally challenged" to say the least, but I think this book can compete internationally (almost).

Söderberg was always excellent at pinpointing feelings of loss, disgust and anguish in dealing with destiny, love and death.

Doctor Glas is his best and quite a quick read. It's thematically dark, but very "light on its feet" in style. It's brutally honest about the horrors of life, but is written beautifully, as though beauty justifies it all.

Strindberg, Lindgren?

[Linus]

Why "culturally challenged" ? It is certainly not what I would have thought of Sweden.

I'm not sure, but I suppose we've been a bit slow on catching up with what the rest of Europe has been up to ever since Medieval times. I feel I often have to look across the Baltic Sea (towards Germany or so) to find quality literature and music.

I'll try to find Dr. Glas, there is apparently a French translation.

Cool, I hope you like it.

[Linus]

Strindberg

He would have been my next choice. He's a bit of an exception to the rule though, which seems to have been his own opinion as well.

I love some of Selma Lagerlöf's writing, but it seems like she's untranslatable.

Lindgren?

Which one?

[North Star]

He would have been my next choice. He's a bit of an exception to the rule though, which seems to have been his own opinion as well.

I love some of Selma Lagerlöf's writing, but it seems like she's untranslatable.
Which one?

Gee, perhaps Astrid. 
(Bach? which one?? )

[Cato]

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

Dude!  More greatest Hoosier books:

Ben-Hur by General Lew Wallace

Raintree County by Ross Lockridge, which is an experimental epic of American life in the 19th century.  It should be better known, but in our fading age of illiteracy, such a massive book has little chance of coming back.

Here in Ohio:

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson.

Oak and Ivy poetry collection by Paul Dunbar, whose works, like the novel by Lockridge, should be better known.  See also his novel: The Sport of the Gods.

James Thurber: EVERYTHING!   

Louis Bromfield: Early Autumn.

Conrad Richter: The Ohio Trilogy: The Trees, The Fields, The Town, and the more famous The Light in the Forest.

And how about three more books, even if they are NOT from America?*

The Water of the Hills: Jean de Florette, Manon of the Spring by Marcel Pagnol: Quite simply, L'Eau des Collines rivals Sophocles and Euripides.

The Story of Mr. Summer aka Mr. Summer's Story (Die Geschichte des Herrn Sommer) - one of the greatest and most neglected books of the last 25 years - by Patrick Süskind.   "A story about childhood, but not for children."



(*I was tempted to mention certain other books by an Ohio author, but since they are not yet published... 0:)  )

[(poco) Sforzando]

Sweden is "culturally challenged" to say the least, but I think this book can compete internationally (almost).

The films of Ingmar Bergman might disagree.

[Brian]

Oak and Ivy poetry collection by Paul Dunbar, whose works, like the novel by Lockridge, should be better known.  See also his novel: The Sport of the Gods.

Paul Dunbar wrote the lyrics to the first all-African-American Broadway musical. He also wrote this poem, which later became even more famous when Maya Angelou quoted it in her memoirs:

Sympathy
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
    When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;   
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,   
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
    When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,   
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
    Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;   
For he must fly back to his perch and cling   
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
    And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars   
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
    When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
    But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,   
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!

[(poco) Sforzando]

Mmm... "What is your favourite Shakespeare play", that would be a nice discussion too.

Mmm...   Since Shakespeare is hands-down the author I read most often (and I'm also constantly attending Shakespearean performances or seeing films of the plays), I'll just settle for answering that particular question.

From the tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Antony, Coriolanus. (Macbeth has been ruined for me by so many abysmal productions that I have trouble returning to it. On the other hand despite numerous abysmal productions I still love Romeo.)

From the histories: Henry IV 1 and 2.

From the comedies: the Dream, Much Ado, As You Like It, The Tenpest above all.

[Brian]

I'll give our Shakespeare thread a shake and see if we can have a good discussion of our favorites over there.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I'll give our Shakespeare thread a shake and see if we can have a good discussion of our favorites over there.

That being the case, I'll copy my entry over there too.

[Linus]

Gee, perhaps Astrid. 
(Bach? which one?? )

Could have been Torgny, could have been Barbro.

[Ken B]

Dude!  More greatest Hoosier books:

Ben-Hur by General Lew Wallace

Raintree County by Ross Lockridge, which is an experimental epic of American life in the 19th century.  It should be better known, but in our fading age of illiteracy, such a massive book has little chance of coming back.

Here in Ohio:

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson.

Oak and Ivy poetry collection by Paul Dunbar, whose works, like the novel by Lockridge, should be better known.  See also his novel: The Sport of the Gods.

James Thurber: EVERYTHING!   

Louis Bromfield: Early Autumn.

Conrad Richter: The Ohio Trilogy: The Trees, The Fields, The Town, and the more famous The Light in the Forest.

And how about three more books, even if they are NOT from America?*

The Water of the Hills: Jean de Florette, Manon of the Spring by Marcel Pagnol: Quite simply, L'Eau des Collines rivals Sophocles and Euripides.

The Story of Mr. Summer aka Mr. Summer's Story (Die Geschichte des Herrn Sommer) - one of the greatest and most neglected books of the last 25 years - by Patrick Süskind.   "A story about childhood, but not for children."



(*I was tempted to mention certain other books by an Ohio author, but since they are not yet published... 0:)  )

Big yay for Sherwood Anderson! That book influenced me enormously. That's how to write prose!

Several mentions of Vonnegut. Another master prose stylist, best of his era perhaps. Still he wouldn't make my list because the message and how much he really really cares are IMO heavy handed and intrusive. But he could be funny! "Billy Pilgrim had a terrific wang by the way. You never know who's going to get one."

[Artem]

Some favorites of mines:

Andrei Bely - Petersburg
Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Idiot
M.Ageyev - Novel with Cocaine
Vasily Grossman - Life and Fate
Vladimir Sorokin - The Norm

I'm hesitating to include something by Nabokov, because most of the things that I really like by him wasn't written in Russian language. Although, if i'm not mistaken Camera Obscura was originally published in Russian language.

[Marc]

Great, thanks, never heard of him
There is a French translation of De koperen tuin apparently (Le jardin de cuivre). But I don't think any of the other titles in French correspond to De nadagen van Pilatus and De kellner en de levenden, unfortunately. I see Les voyageurs (The Travellers), L'île au rhum (The Rhum Island) and Un fou chasse l'autre (A mad man chases the other).
Well I'll start with Le jardin de cuivre then...

Sartre wanted De nadagen van Pilatus to be translated, but he did not manage.

For good fun, Rumeiland (L'île au rhum) is a good choice, too. It's probably Vestdijk's best selling book worldwide, because it was translated in English, French and German (Fahrt nach Jamaica) in its days. The central subject is the hunt of a noble Englishman for this lady:



He's convinced he's able to find her, even though she's OPD (officiously/officially pronounced dead).

[Cosi bel do]

Sartre wanted De nadagen van Pilatus to be translated, but he did not manage.

For good fun, Rumeiland (L'île au rhum) is a good choice, too. It's probably Vestdijk's best selling book worldwide, because it was translated in English, French and German (Fahrt nach Jamaica) in its days. The central subject is the hunt of a noble Englishman for this lady:


He's convinced he's able to find her, even though she's OPD (officiously/officially pronounced dead).

OK, so I'll see about this one too, after The copper garden anyway.

[pjme]

From Belgium and Hungary:

Willem Elsschot: Lijmen (1924, translated as "Soft Soap" and collected in Three Novels, 1965)
Kaas ("Cheese", 1933, translated in 2002 by Paul Vincent [ISBN 1-86207-481-X])

Louis paul Boon:In 1953 he published the work that now stands as his greatest masterpiece, Chapel Road (De Kapellekensbaan, translated by Adrienne Dixon), which he began to write as early as 1943. Its dazzling construction combines several narrative threads, including an almost postmodern one where the writer and his friends discuss how the story should develop further. Another one is an extensive reworking of the most classic medieval work in the Dutch language, the twelfth-century story of Reynard the fox.( Wiki)

A most interesting figure:

Jean Ray is the best-known pseudonym among the many used by Raymondus Joannes de Kremer (8 July 1887 – 17 September 1964), a prolific Belgian (Flemish) writer. Although he wrote journalism, stories for young readers in Dutch by the name John Flanders, and scenarios for comic strips and detective stories, he is best known for his tales of the fantastique written in French under the name Jean Ray. Among speakers of English, he is famous for his macabre novel Malpertuis (1943), which was filmed by Harry Kümel in 1971 (starring Orson Welles). He also used the pseudonyms King Ray, Alix R. Bantam and Sailor John, among others. (Wiki)

After World War I the poet Paul van Ostaijen was an important representative of expressionism in his poems.

And it is good to re-read  Maurice Maeterlinck. Not only Pelléas, Tintagilles or l'Oiseau bleu. His play 'The blind" was recently staged again .

Apart from Sandor Marai, I recently discovered Deszö Kosztolànyi (1885-1936) : Skylark and Nero, the bloody poet.

Another find: Zsuzsa Bank(1965) : The swimmer.

P.

[Karl Henning]

(*I was tempted to mention certain other books by an Ohio author, but since they are not yet published... 0:)  )

Strooth, I felt the tug of just that temptation, myself!

[Karl Henning]

Several mentions of Vonnegut. Another master prose stylist, best of his era perhaps. Still he wouldn't make my list because the message and how much he really really cares are IMO heavy handed and intrusive. But he could be funny!

Agreed, entirely.

[Henk]

Harry Mulisch is by far the best author in the Netherlands:

I mention only two books:

Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven (his magnum opus and his "mother book")
Harry Mulisch - The Composition of the World (his philosophical work and his "father book")