World literature that I want to read

[lobelia321]

Further to my recent post on world literature and the overwhelmingly generous response to it, here's my updated list of Novels To Read. This is the fruit of several hours of online and dictionary research and incorporates some of the suggestions kindly made by you. I had to restrain myself because once I get onto listmaking there's no stopping me.

ETA: Continued annotation: Have I read it or not? Last annotated 27 October 2008.

World literature to read
In alphabetical order of country.


Albania
Ismail Kadaré, The General of the Dead Army I've now read two others by the same author but not this one..

Australia
Thomas Keneally, Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith

Sue Wolfe

Christos Tsiolkas, Loaded (included simply for the promise of m/m debauchery)

Belgium
Something by Maeterlinck

Denmark
Jens Peter Jacobsen, Niels LyhneI've now read it.

Ib Michael, Prince

China
Dream of the Red Chamber

Wu Ch'eng-en, The Monkey King, or The Journey to the West (16th C.)

Czech
Hasek, The Good Soldier Sveyk

Finland
Mika Waltari, Sinuhe, the Egyptian

France
Giraudoux, Trojan War something

Alain Fournier, Le Grand MeaulnesI've now read it. Gorgeous!!!

Something by Balzac

Voltaire, Candide

Dumas, Count of Monte Cristo

Proust Still sort of reading it.

German-speaking
Something by Stifter, Schnitzler, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Jean Paul, Kleist (um, I may have to choose one only; the year only has 12 months after all)

Ghana
Ama Ata Aidoo (a woman), Changes

Greece (ancient)
Homer, OdysseeI've now read it. Liked the Iliad better.

Something by Aeschylus and by Euripides and by Sophocles I've now read it. One play each.

Greece (modern)
Evgenia Fakinou, Astradeni

Cavafy, poetry I've now read it.

Hungary
Miklós Bánffy, Transylvanian Trilogy

Iceland
Haldor Laxness, Independent People I've now read another one by the same author. Not fabulous.

India
Chitra Banerji Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices

Indonesia
Mochtar Lubis, Tiger, Tiger!

Japan
Lady Murasaki, Tale of Genji

Sei Shonagon, Pillow Book

Natsume Soseki, Kokoro (19th C.)

Osamu Dazai, The Setting Sun

Shusaku Endo, Silence (Christian)

Kenya
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, The River Between

Mexico
Laura Esquivel, The Law of Love

Netherlands
Mulisch, SiegfriedI've now read it.

New Zealand
Witi Ihimaera, The Matriarch and Nights in the Garden of Spain (the latter = gay)

Nigeria
Ken Saro-Wiwa, Zoza Boy

Persia (ancient)
Zarathustra, Gathas

Persia (mediaeval)
Nizami, Seven Princesses I've now read bits of it. Have yet to find a good affordable translation.

Hafiz, poetry I've now read some.

Poland
Henryk Szienkiewicz, Quo vadis

Andrzej Szczypiorski, The beautiful Mrs Seidenman I've now started to read it but got bored.

Portugal
Eca de Queirós I've now read it. Wonderful.

Russia
Eduard Limonov, Memoirs of a Russian Punk

Tatiana Tolstaya I've now read it. Didn't like it.

Viktor Pelevin, Omon Ra I've now read it. This one's not so great but two others by him were mind-blowing.

Senegal
Ousmane Sembène

Spain
Calderón, Life is a dream

Alas, La Regenta I've now bought it but not yet read.

Arturo Perez-Reverte, The Fencing Master I've now read it.

Sudan
Tayeb Salih

Switzerland
Walser
Keller

UK
W. Corbett, Two Gentlemen Sharing (included as bonus gay novel)

USA
Gail Tsukiyama, The Samurai's Garden and Women of the Silk

Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk and The Good Earth


May I say that I feel just ever so slightly daunted?? Shall I keep you posted on my progress through this mound?

Comments

[andraste-oz.livejournal.com]

I have another New Zealand suggestion, if you haven't already read it: the Bone People by Keri Hulme.

[lazulus]

I love that book and was stunned to see that it is viewed with derision by many Booker watchers!! Only goes to show that taste is very very relative!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I quite liked it.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I'v read it. Thanks! :-)

[pithetaphish]

if you're still taking suggestions (sorry i somehow missed your last post), 'The Vintner's Luck' by Elizabeth Knox (NZ) is worth a read.

and i guess being Australian i have to recommend a few of my favourites: 'What I Have Written' or 'The Architect' by John Scott, 'Cloudstreet' by Tim Winton, 'The Lovemakers' by Alan Wearne (it's a verse novel, but still brilliant), and 'In The Service of Clouds' by Delia Falconer

[pithetaphish]

and then of course forget to recommend what caught my eye, namely Japanese fiction.

I love 'N.P.' & 'Kitchen' by Banana Yoshimoto, her others are a bit so-so. Haruki Murakami is pracitcally inescapable, 'Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World' I think is his best thus far. Ryu Murakami's 'Almost Transparent Blue' is a trip. Yukio Mishima is also a favourite, 'Spring Snow', 'The Temple of the Golden Pavilion' and 'Confessions of a Mask' are brilliant. I haven't read his 'Forbidden Colours' yet, but you might find it interesting ^_^

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I don't like Haruki Murakami; gave his novels to Oxfam. Yukio Mishima I do want to read at some point! Thanks.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'll put it on my List of Books to Read Once I've Read All This Lot. But I like to keep my links to the antipodes open. :-) I've read Cloudstreet and hated it (I liked Dirt Music). The others I don't know!

book report

[office-ennui.livejournal.com]

yes please keep us posted! do you want to know something really weird? rothko drew grids that he numbered under the paintings of his early work - used for linear perspective. for some reason i think that is really really odd. have you ever read city of night?

Re: book report

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

That is very weird. What is the meaning of it? Who wrote City of Night?

[jayest.livejournal.com]

Since you're getting the NZ recs now, I would recommend:
Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff
Under the Mountain by Maurice Gee

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Will put these on the List of Books to Read Once I Have Read All This Lot! :-)

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

Oh gosh yes, The Vintner's Luck is fabulous (literally and figuratively). Though I can't get along with any of Knox's other books.

Yes, do post updates and reviews! Maybe your experience will entice me to read something fresh and new ...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It's very good to get a second-rec.

[eyebrowofdoom.livejournal.com]

I reckon "The Jesus Man" by Christos Tsiolkas, his second novel, is a lot better than Loaded. NB this is the man whose name rendered me incapable of spelling Marton Csokas with any serenity.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

But Tsiolkas is a Greek name and Csokas a Hungarian. How could you have got confused? *is puzzled*

Thanks for rec. I got the Loaded off the Guardian Top Ten Gay Novels list. But what do they know, eh?

[eyebrowofdoom.livejournal.com]

Well, of course I should have been referring to the national origin... :D It's that they're both surnames I've never seen except in those two people's names, and there's that consonant, s... o... kas thing happening.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Indeed, I am shocked at your etymological blitheness. Shocked, I say.

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

Ooh, what a great list! Please keep us posted. I think I'll save in any case.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I've just found another list I made in Holland. I will have to add even more items, argh! Am still reading the Makioka Sisters at the moment and still loving it.

My two cents about Chinese fiction

[opengoal.livejournal.com]

Is it too late to comment here?

Just to add my two cents about Chinese and Hong Kong fiction:
"Dream of the Red Chamber" is indeed a classic but honestly many Chinese people find it too long, slow and boring. So I'd suggest anyone who wants to sample Chinese literature leave it 'til last.

I think both "Journey to the West" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" are a good place to start. They are both firmly in the canon of Chinese literature AND entertaining (at least the Chinese versions are). Another plus point is that both stories have been accepted as not only a part of Chinese heritage but an East Asian one. They have been adapted many, many times on TV (e.g. Romance of the Three Kingdoms), film (e.g. Stephen Chow's "A Chinese Odyssey"), Japanese anime (e.g. Saiyuki) and Japanese computer games (e.g. Romance of the Three Kingdoms). (Actually the hero of Dragonball is named after the Monkey King). So reading them would be like killing several birds with one stone.

As for modern fiction, I would suggest Lu Xun's The True Story of Ah Q (written 1918-1926) [read online here]. He was an iconic figure in both mainland China and Taiwan.

As for fiction in the mainland, I'd suggest Zhao Zhenkai's "Waves" (which is about young intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution). He's not very famous but it's a very good book and the English version is quite well translated. If you can't find that book, you can try "The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century" edited by Bonnie S. McDougall.

For Taiwan, I'd suggest Pai Hsien-yung's Taipei People which he translated himself. It's a collection of short stories about people who had fled to Taiwan after the National Party lost the mainland to the Communist Party. It's an important part of Taiwanese history and the quality of writing is widely acclaimed (which actually is rare among modern fiction written in Chinese).

For Hong Kong, I'd like to suggest Xi Xi's "My City: A Hong Kong Story" and "Flying Carpet: A Tale Of Fertillia". She's one of the best Chinese women writers and she writes Magical Realism surprisingly well.

Re: My two cents about Chinese fiction

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is so kind! Such generous reccage! I am at the moment reading a Chinese novel, One Man's bible by omg, I've forgotten his name, he is a Nobel Prize winner. But it is rather hard going and I'm going to stop because it's just too plodding. Some really interesting bits about the cultural revolution and then some pretentious flashforwards, the worst of het. I'm not sure why people win the Nobel Prize. I think you have to be fairly arty-farty. Unlike the Booker Prize where you have to treat Big Themes like Religion or Ethnicity but don't actually have to write well.

Re: My two cents about Chinese fiction

[opengoal.livejournal.com]

I know who you're talking about. Most Chinese people think Gao Xingjian got the Nobel Prize only because his works had been translated into Swedish.

On re-reading my recs, I realized that many of the books can probably be found in university libraries only. So I'm adding these two recs: "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" by Dai Sijie [read excerpt here] and Ha Jin's books. They weren't originally written in Chinese (Dai's was in French, Ha's in English) but they are Chinese in essence and written by Chinese. BTW, Dai Sijie also directed the movie version of the book.

It's rather difficult to recommend Chinese novels to non-Chinese because the translations often do not do justice to the originals. I've just checked out the Brewitt-Taylor translation of Romance of Three Kingdoms which Yellow Bridge recommends and I now regret recommending. It's a pity if people are stopped from enjoying the wonderful epic because the translator wants to imitate Old Chinese. Read Moss Robert's translation or even watch the TV versions if you can. Because it's the story and the well-crafted characters that are important.

A note about Chinese literature: For very long time, fiction did not count as literature at all. They were just popular entertainment – a bit like Shakespeare at his time. So you can't really find that many Chinese classical novels. Usually people would say there are only four: "Journey to the West" (1590s), "Outlaws of the Marsh" or "Water Margin" (1570s), "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" (1330s), "Dream of the Red Chamber" (1792).

This may sound strange but I'd actually recommend watching the TV versions first (maybe you can rent them in Chinatown?). That way you can get a better idea what the characters and the setting look like, the gist of the stories and what's good about the stories. (Maybe I should explain a bit more about the reception of these books among Chinese people nowadays: Everyone knows the stories from these 4 books but only Romance of the Three Kingdoms is still read in the original as pleasure reading. Dream of the Red Chamber is read by intellectuals only.)

Scholars don't list Pu Songling's "Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio" [Wikipedia entry here] as a "classic" but it's one of the books I enjoy most. The stories are not grand epics but humanistic and romantic tales about ghosts and spirits.

As for contemporary fiction, in addition to Taipei People, I'd recommend Pai Hsien-yung's Crystal Boys and Li Ang's "Butcher's Wife", a story about a woman who had to kill her husband to escape physical and sexual abuse.

Pai Hsien-yung is probably the only gay writer who made it into our school textbooks. And Crystal Boys was the only gay novel in my school library when I was in secondary school.

The cover of Crystal Boys may look like gay porn but it's actually a poignant novel about young gay men in the 1960s, about the "family of choice" they built after being kicked out of their families, about surviving and life on the fringe. The Taiwan PBS adapted it into a TV series but no subtitled version is released.

Last but not least, a genre that's unique to Chinese – wuxia or martial arts fiction. Wuxia fiction is as popular as romance fiction among Chinese. Jinyong's The Book and the Sword is definitely worth a read.

Re: My two cents about Chinese fiction

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I am quite overwhelmed by this generous reccage! Such detail! And I love getting the background lowdown about intellectuals only reading Red Chamber. Well, I sometimes do consider myself an intellectual, *g*, but I also am arty-farty allergic and want a good plot. The book was actually recommended to me years ago by a professor of Chinese painting who scribbled the rec in the margins of an essay I had written for his class. I started reading it several times but, as they say in French, it was a book that fell from my hands. Onto my shelf. Where it continues to sit. Maybe I can set it free now? Or see the movie!
\
I have bookmarked this post! You can see that my list is already long plus I was given a load of novels for Christmas but I slowly eat my way through it all. Sometimes also I have phases where I don't read a lot of fiction, and sometimes I will read only fanfic forf 3 weeks at a stretch. At the moment, I'm reading a German novel by someone called Dieter Wellershoff. My parents gave it to me for christmas; it has quite a lot of sex in it and now, as a result, I keep seeing my parents before me when I read the sex scenes! This is not conducive!!!

[physicsxmagic.livejournal.com]

(very very late to this party)
Spain suggestion:
anything by Federico García Lorca, I rec Yerma.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

hahahahah. Only six years late! I see that we are scootling through each other's LJs like prowling cats. Or something. What fun.

Hm, I must revisit this list. I have phases of total novel-literature-reading, and then phases of other-reading (recently ploughed my way through ten ancient Greek tragedies wot i LOVED) but at the moment I cannot even cope with anything that doesn't have Arthur in it.

[physicsxmagic.livejournal.com]

I'm not thaaaaat creepy.
It's linked in your profile :p

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh.

And here I thought you were thaaat creepy. *slight disappointment*

;-P

[physicsxmagic.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'm already through six years of your journal. :p

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

How can I possibly keep up with this?? Ack. *g*

Six years ago? I was probably deep in HP at that time.