"The Bigger Read List"
Do I complain too much about Anglo-centrism? Anyway, the English Center of the International PEN decided to create its own list of books with a popular appeal that is more global in nature. It is a surprisingly good list of non-English works that truly deserve attention. One big question for the makers of the "Bigger Reading List": only one African -- where are the the Ben Jallouns, the Fall's, the Sembene's?Click here to read the list.
Classical and Antique
Aesop, The Complete Fables
Saint Augustine, The Confessions
The Bible
Homer, The Iliad
Homer, The Odyssey
Lao Tzu, Book of the Way (Tao Te Ching)
The Koran
The Mahabarata
Virgil, The Aeneid
Wilhelm, Richard and Baynes, Cary F., trans. (original author unknown), Book of Changes (The I Ching)
Romance and Mediterranean
Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes
de Balzac, Honore, La Cousine Bette
de Beauvoir, Simone, The Second Sex
Calvino, Italo, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller
Camus, Albert, The Outsider
Camus, Albert, The Plague
Celine, Louis-Ferdinand, Journey to the End of the Night
De Cervantes, Miguel, Don Quixote
Cocteau, Jean, Les Enfants Terribles
Coehlo, Paulo, The Alchemist
Dante, The Inferno
Dumas, Alexandre, The Count of Monte Cristo
Dumas, Alexandre, The Three Musketeers
Duras, Marguerite, The Lover
Eça de Queirós, José Maria, The Maias
Eco, Umberto, The Name of the Rose
Flaubert, Gustave, Bouvard and Pecuchet
Flaubert, Gustave, Madame Bovary
Hugo, Victor, Les Misérables
Kazantzakis, Nikos, Zorba the Great
de Laclos, Pierre Choderlos, Dangerous Liaisons
di Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi, The Leopard
Leopardi, Giacomo, The Canti
de Lorris, Guillame and de Meun, Jean, Le Roman de la Rose
Pamuk, Orhan, The Black Book
Pamuk, Orhan, My Name is Red
Pascal, Blais, Pensées
Goytisolo, Juan, Count Julian
Grossman, Vasily, Life and Fate
Kadare, Ismael, The Three-Arched Bridge
Kemal, Yasar, Mehmed My Hawk
Khayyam, Omar, The Rubaiyat
Kosztolányi, Dezsö, Anna Edes
Marai, Sandor, Embers
Perec, George, Life A User’s Guide
Proust, Marcel, In Search of Lost Time
Queneau, Raymond, Zazie in the Metro
Robbe-Grillet, Alain, Jealousy
Sagan, Françoise, Bonjour Tristesse
de Saint-Exupéry, Antoine, The Little Prince
Saramago, Jose, The Stone Raft
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Words
Stendhal, Henri, The Charterhouse of Parma
Stendhal, Henri, Scarlet and Black
Torrente Ballester, Gonzalo, The Saga Fuga de J B
Germanic and Scandinavian
Anderson, Hans Christian, Fairy Tales
Christensen, Lars Saabye, The Half-Brother
Enquist, Per Olov, The Visit of the Royal Physician
Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams
Frank, Anne, Diary of a Young Girl
Gaarder, Jostein, Sophie’s World
Grass, Günter, The Tin Drum
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Faust
Grimm, Jacob and Grimm, Wilhelm, Fairy Tales
Hamsun, Knut, The Growth of the Soul
Hamsun, Knut, Hunger
Harrer, Heinrich, Seven Years in Tibet
Heyerdahl, Thor, The Kon Tiki Expedition
Høeg, Peter, Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow
Kafka, Franz, The Trial
Klemperer, Victor, I Shall Bear Witness
Laxness, Halldor, Independent People
Mann, Thomas, Buddenbrooks
Mann, Thomas, Death in Venice
Mann, Thomas, Magic Mountain
Marx, Karl, The Communist Manifesto
Musil, Robert, Young Torless
Nietzsche, Friedrich, Twilight of the Idols
Pleijel, Agneta, The Dog Star
Roth, Joseph, The Radetsky March
Schopenhauer, Arthur, Essays and Aphorisms
Sebald, W.G., Austerlitz
Sebald, W.G., Emigrants
Sebald, W.G., The Rings of Saturn
Schlink, Bernard, The Reader
Süskind, Patrick, Perfume
Latin America
Allende, Isabel, The House of the Spirits
Borges, Jorge-Luis, Labyrinths
De Assis, Machado Joaquim Maria, Dom Casmurro
Fuentes, Carlos, The Years with Laura Diaz
Garcίa Márquez, Gabriel, Love in the Time of Cholera
Garcίa Márquez, Gabriel, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Vargos Llosa, Mario, The War at the End of the World
Asian
Khayyam, Omar, The Rubaiyat
Lu Xu, The Story of Ah Q
Mao Tsetung, Little Red Book
Marukami, Haruki, Norwegian Wood
Marukami, Haruki, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
Mishima, Yukio, Forbidden Colours
Öe, Kenzaburo, Somersault
Tanizaki, Junichiro, The Makioka Sisters
Xingjian, Gao, Soul Mountain
Slavic
Bulgakov, Mikhail, The Master and Margarita
Chekhov, Anton, The Lady with the Dog and other stories
Dostoyevski, Fyodor, Crime and Punishment
Dostoyevski, Fyodor, The Idiot
Gogol, Nikolai, Dead Souls
Grossman, Vasily, Life and Fate
Kadare, Ismael, The Three-Arched Bridge
Kertesz, Imre, Fateless
Kis, Danilo, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich
Kosztolányi, Dezsö, Anna Edes
Kundera, Milan, Identity
Kundera, Milan, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Marai, Sandor, Embers
Nabokov, Vladimir, The Gift
Pasternak, Boris, Doctor Zhivago
Platonov, Andrey, Happy Moscow
Platonov, Andrey, Soul
Platonov, Andrey, The Return
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Szerb, Antal, Journey by Moonlight
Tolstoy, Leo, Anna Karenina
Tolstoy, Leo, War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan, First Love
Africa
Schoeman, Karel, Another Country
[ETA] I had to redo the list because some entries were not apprent.
posted by Nathanael @ 10:25 AM
2 Comments:
6 from the Classic and Antiquity column - wow, that's a lot for an Americanist!
The Alchemist? That book was horrible!!
Of the Romance and Mediterranean category - 6 of the 8 that I have read are French!
And 3 of the 7 in Germanic and Scandinavian are Mann :)
Garcίa Márquez is the only thing I've read in the Latin American category and Soul Mountain in the "Asian" (there are a lot more books that this category could have. I mean, if they are including Aesops fables they should include Neijing Suwen)
And finally, my slavic is confined to Crime and Punishment, Identity, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
Coelho sucks ... I can't think of any other way of putting it.
It is an interesting list, not a canon as much as "great books you can really enjoy." Probably why The Alchemist makes an appearance.
I didn't do so well with it, either: 4/10/11/1/1/2/0 by section. (BTW, Anne Karenina is actually on the list.)
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