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From where I stand, Hispanic and Slavic literature is fairly unknown and underrated on the other side of the pond. Ramón del Valle Inclán's "Lights of Bohemia"
by jxub 8y ago
From where I stand, Hispanic and Slavic literature is fairly unknown and underrated on the other side of the pond.
Ramón del Valle Inclán's "Lights of Bohemia": A great portrait of Madrid and the dirty guts of the Spain from 100 years ago, written in a gorgeously precise, dark and multifaceted range of vocabulary.
Ortega y Gasset's "Rebellion of the Masses". It is centered in the individual "I am me and my circumstances" and its evolution since the enlightenment.
Sapkowski's "Witcher". Look for a good translation, lots of Slavic mythology tidbits and wonderfully juicy curse words.
Stanislaw Lem's "The Star Diaries". Nice if you like to fantasize about buying pieces for your spaceship in a shopping centre or think about chair-like aliens with 11 different sexes (in the book).
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "A hundred years of solitude". The book is all about "realismo fantástico", joining the real and imaginary words in an unforgettable blend.
- Tade0 8y agoI guess it boils down to the lack of accurate translations. As a certain Jarosław Grzędowicz put answering a question why his works haven't been translated yet(paraphrased): English native speakers in general are not too fond of translations not done by other English native speakers. Unfortunately there aren't many English native speakers who happen to be experts in Polish literature. On top of that all four of them are lumberjacks.
- wenc 8y agoGabriel Garcia Marquez's work is very famous in the U.S. Marquez happens to be one of the few Hispanic authors that most Americans have read. Isabel Allende also enjoyed a period of brief popularity in the U.S. (for House of Spirits).
- lappet 8y agoCan you please provide more examples of Slavic literature? I am only aware of Russian authors. Any idea if the english translation of Witcher by Danusia Stok is good? I am very curious about Slavic culture and recently blogged about "Slavs"[1], I would love to add a literature section to my post. [1] https://raviramanujam.com/post/blog/slavs.html https://raviramanujam.com/post/blog/slavs.html
- BrandoElFollito 8y agoThe Nobel prize winner W Szymborska wrote some beautiful poems. I usually find poetry self-adoring and usually completely unreadable by what I read of Szymborska was feeric.
- lappet 8y agoThanks for the suggestion, I will check out her work.
- jxub 8y ago> Any idea if the english translation of Witcher by Danusia Stok is good? I've just doublechecked that the official English translation is good indeed, I haven't got first hand knowledge though https://www.quora.com/I-intend-to-read-the-Witcher-books-but-see-a-lot-of-conflicting-opinions-regarding-which-is-better-the-official-or-fan-translation https://www.quora.com/I-intend-to-read-the-Witcher-books-but... My knowledge of Slavic literature limits mostly to the Polish and some Russian authors, despite that I can recommend a Czech satire book that I liked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk Other than that, Czeslaw Milosz for the poetry, Henryk Sienkiewicz has some great novels about the history of Poland (The Trilogy and The Teutonic Knights are damn hooking and intense), Zofia Kossak Szczucka (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zofia_Kossak-Szczucka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zofia_Kossak-Szczucka) is another solid historical writer. I am aware however that my tastes in literature are somewhat eclectic. Russian Lit: Nikolai Gogol for the stories, Solzhenitsyn for the Gulag Archipelago, and of course War and Peace (Tolstoy) and Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky). Reserve some weeks for the last two though, heh ;) Any help you need, just shoot me an email (in the profile), but I'm not an expert by any means :P