Favourite books from your country (or in your language)

[Florestan]

Except Cioran and Eliade, in French, Panaït Istrati is widely available and well-known.

Istrati is very good and his very life could be the subject of a page-turner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panait_Istrati

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.

I haven´t read anything by them so I cannot comment.

Other great Romanian novelists: Liviu Rebreanu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liviu_Rebreanu, Mihail Sadoveanu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihail_Sadoveanu, Cezar Petrescu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cezar_Petrescu

Poets: Lucian Blaga  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Blaga, Tudor Arghezi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tudor_Arghezi,Ion Barbu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Barbu

On this page http://www.romanianvoice.com/poezii/ you can find a lot of original Romanian poetry and some translations (English, French, German, Swedish, Portuguese and Spanish)

[Cato]

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

Well, thank you! 

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!

Vonnegut (I believe) wanted to become a 20th-century Mark Twain, but yes, the ideology was too overt.

[Florestan]

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

I´ve read Gosta Berlings Saga (in Romanian translation) and it is one of my favorite books. There is also a translation of Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige which I can hardly wait to read to my son when he´ll have the proper age.

[pjme]

Hugo Claus cannot be absent:

The Sorrow of Belgium (Dutch: Het verdriet van België) is a novel by Hugo Claus published in 1983. It's his best known work. In 1994 it was translated in English by Arnold J. Pomerans.

The novel is classified as bildungsroman and comprises two parts:

"The Sorrow" (Dutch: Het verdriet); 27 numbered chapters with titles
"of Belgium" (Dutch: van België); text not divided in chapters.

It tells the story of the childhood and youth of Louis Seynaeve (Claus's alter ego) in the Flemish village of Walle (a part of Kortrijk) from 1939 to 1947, coinciding with the period Second World War, the German occupation of Belgium, and its aftermath.(Wiki).

A personal favorite  is writer Christine D'haen

Christine D'haen (25 October 1923 – 3 September 2009) was a Flemish author and poet. She was born in Sint-Amandsberg and died at Bruges.
D'haen studied Germanic philology at the University of Ghent and continued her studies in Amsterdam and Edinburgh. She settled in Bruges and became a teacher at high school. She made an inventory of the handwritings of Guido Gezelle while working at the Gezelle archive. She wrote a biography of Guido Gezelle and also translated work of Hugo Claus into English.

[Cosi bel do]

I´ve read Gosta Berlings Saga (in Romanian translation) and it is one of my favorite books. There is also a translation of Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige which I can hardly wait to read to my son when he´ll have the proper age.

Yes I've read Gösta Berling too, but I don't think the translation was good, I found this book difficult to follow. I wouldn't be surprised if it had been cut.
I like Nils Holgersson but it seems there's a newer French translation which is the first complete one. I'll have to read it again then

[Henk]

Hugo Claus cannot be absent:

+1 I like his poetic works, should read more of them

[vandermolen]

Sorry to nitpick Jeffrey but the genius behind this was Geoffrey Willans "as any fule kno" 

Chiz, moan, drone, what a fulish mistake! I was too busy to get the spelling of 'compleet' right and then spelt poor Geoffrey's name wrong. Willans died sadly young in 1958 - a great loss I think. Glad you are another fan of the book - definitely desert island material for me. I will search out the other book you mention which I was not aware of. Many thanks for alerting me to it.

[vandermolen]

Nice list, you have a lot to choose from. Many of my favorites are Brits (unlike with music), but I'm like you and the Russian....

Thank you Gurn. I just bought a new copy of a The Great Gatsby which I always enjoyed. My mother was an admirer of the short stories of O'Henry as am I . Also the stories of Edgar Alan Poe.

Yes, we are spoilt for choice over here with writers. Yet we were once described as 'the land without music' which I certainly do not believe.

[vandermolen]

Coo ur gosh looks like we need a Molesworth thred here which (gramer) I would hav included xcept I limited myself to welsh lit chiz.  That other weed r s tomas is also joly good and anyone who sa otherwise I will uterly tuough up ect.

Definitely, although the exchanges will, I suspect, be lost on many who are unfamiliar with the book (as any fule kno.)

[Cato]

My mother was an admirer of the short stories of O. Henry as am I .

I almost included him as an "Ohio author" by virtue of his time spent here, but some of that time was forced: he was in the state prison for embezzlement!     0:)

[Brian]

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!

If I had not restricted myself to Indiana, I never would have mentioned Vonnegut. There are dozens of American authors I appreciate more.

[Gurn Blanston]

Thank you Gurn. I just bought a new copy of a The Great Gatsby which I always enjoyed. My mother was an admirer of the short stories of O'Henry as am I . Also the stories of Edgar Alan Poe.

Yes, we are spoilt for choice over here with writers. Yet we were once described as 'the land without music' which I certainly do not believe.

Much as I love O.Henry, I'll trade him to you if I can have Saki in return. 

[Gurn Blanston]

If I had not restricted myself to Indiana, I never would have mentioned Vonnegut. There are dozens of American authors I appreciate more.

It isn't about appreciation, is it. It's about enjoyment, and there aren't a lot of American authors whom I enjoy more. I wasn't restricted to Vonnegut, I chose him intentionally.

[Leo K.]

Kurt Vonnegut's 'Blue Beard' - he signed my copy after a lecture, a wonderful conversationalist!

William Faulkner 'The Sound and the Fury'

Stephen King 'Insomnia'

F. Scott Fitzgerald 'Tender is the Night'

[Marc]

My favourite Dutch poet is Rutger Kopland.
Here's my fave poem by him:

Zoals de pagina's van een krant
in het gras langzaam om
slaan in de wind, en het is de wind
niet, die dit doet,

zoals wanneer een deken in de avond,
buiten, ligt alsof hij ligt
te slapen, en het is de deken
niet, zo

niets is het, niets dan de verdrietige
beweging van een hand, de weerloze
houding van een lichaam,

en er is geen hand, er is
geen lichaam, terwijl ik toch
zo dichtbij ben.

Translation by James Brockway:

Like the pages of a newspaper
flapping slowly to and fro in the grass
and it is not the wind
that is doing this,

as when of an evening, a blanket,
left outdoors, lies as though it lay
asleep, and it is not the blanket,
so near it is

to being nothing, nothing but the grieving
gesture of a hand, the vulnerable
attitude of a body,

and there is no hand, there is
no body, while I, after all,
am so close.

Taken from the collection: Rutger Kopland, Memories of the Unknown. London, Harvill Press, 2001.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Memories-Rutger-Kopland/dp/1860468950

James Brockway (1916-2000) was a very good translator of the poetry of Rutger Kopland (1934-2012), but somehow the atmosphere of the original poem cannot be equalled. I've read this poem (in Dutch) a few times aloud to friends and even colleagues, but my voice always breaks during the final verse.

[vandermolen]

I almost included him as an "Ohio author" by virtue of his time spent here, but some of that time was forced: he was in the state prison for embezzlement!     0:)

Leo, yes, I think I knew that. Agree about James Thurber - my dad loved his work. Recently introduced my daughter to 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty', such a great story. My daughter said that it reminded her of me.   

[vandermolen]

Much as I love O.Henry, I'll trade him to you if I can have Saki in return. 

Oh yes, I like Saki too. And let's not forget P.G. Wodehouse!

[North Star]

P.G. Woodhouse!

Never heard of him.
Wodehouse, on the other hand.. 

[vandermolen]

Never heard of him.
Wodehouse, on the other hand.. 

Well done for spotting the deliberate mistake hahahaha 

Have corrected it now.

One of my colleagues is a Woodhouse.

[Karl Henning]

Do you call him/her "Plum"?