Outsider in a foreign country

[kelby_lake]

Can you recommend any novels about outsiders in foreign countries/environments?

[kiki1982]

Not a novel, I'm afraid, but Alan Bennet's An Englishman Abroad is good. Television play about an ex-spy (real).

[mal4mac]

Dickens - Martin Chuzzlewit.
James - Portrait of a Lady
Swift - Gullivers Travels

[ktm5124]

Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises
E.M. Forster - A Passage to India

[dfloyd]

The Harry Bosch novels of Michael Connolly are quite good. His last, Nine Dragons, is about an American policeman searching for his daughter in Hong Kong.

[The Comedian]

If have the courage, zeal, and curiosity to give a graphic novel a try: Persepolis volumes 1 & 2. They're a contiguous story; volume one is about what happens if your country turns foreign on you; volume 2 is a more standard return/stranger in one's own homeland sort of story. Good stuff, really.

[kelby_lake]

Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises
E.M. Forster - A Passage to India

Both are on my list :D

[ALF]

Try (The talented Mr. Ripley)

[TurquoiseSunset]

Alice in Wonderland ;)
Shantaram
...I'll think of more...

[scaltz]

Nice thread, I wanted to start a similar on too. Does anybody know books about social alienation due to language or inability to express oneself in a foreign tongue?

The setting has got to be in a foreign country too.

[keilj]

Both are on my list :D

I'd recommend For Whom the Bell Tolls over Sun Also Rises, becasue For Whom puts more emphasis on the protagonist being an outsider, native Spaniards treating him as a foreigner, so on. (plus I think For Whom is just a better book)

Invisible man by Ellison, though it is truly not about a foreigner, has that feel of an outsider who lives far different from the society he finds himself in

[kelby_lake]

Nice thread, I wanted to start a similar on too. Does anybody know books about social alienation due to language or inability to express oneself in a foreign tongue?

The setting has got to be in a foreign country too.

Lost in Translation is a film but it has that theme.

[Tallon]

Left Hand Of Darkness - Le Guin
Stranger in a Strange Land - Heinlien

two great books about lone aliens on a different planet.

[JBI]

Just read any Diaspora fiction.

[Spoleto]

I second Persepolis, this film adaption is beautifully done, also.

[kelby_lake]

I saw Persepolis, quite liked it :D Preferably no sci-fi/fantasy.

[mrmontagne]

I'm yet to read it but Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy seems to fit the bill perfectly.

"This essentially Kafkaesque tale follows the travails of Budai, a linguist who steps off a plane expecting to be in Helsinki but finds himself in a sprawling and densely populated metropolis whose residents speak an unknown and unintelligible language. Budai is swept along with the crowd to a hotel, where he tries in vain to explain his predicament.

With no route home apparent, Budai spends his days trying to learn what he can about the city and the language but is frustrated at every turn. The only person with whom he has any kind of relationship is Epepe, who operates the lift in his hotel. But even she can't help when Budai's money runs out and his situation becomes ever more desperate."

It's original-language title is Epepe

[hamlette]

Try The City of Dreaming Books. :smilewinkgrin:

[antiprefix]

Asian-American, Dominican-American, Haitian-American literature:

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Turning Japanese by David Mura

Seven (short story) by Edwidge Danticat

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Swimming Lessons and other stories by Rohinton Mistry

The Joy Luck Club & The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

[andrewoberg]

I second "Stranger in a Strange Land"--Great!

[kasie]

How about one where a member of the host country feels himself to be the outsider in a 'foreign' culture? The Assistant by Bernard Malamud is a moving tale about an all-American boy who goes to work for a Jewish delicatessen-keeper in early twentieth century New York - you may need to have the hankies ready at the end.

Henry James' The Europeans is also about a clash of cultures, as is Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence.

[Emil Miller]

The Keys to the Kingdom by A.J.Cronin is about a missionary's life in China.

The Razor's Edge by W.S. Maugham is a story of expatriate Americans in France and specifically deals with the protagonist Larry Darrell who spends the novel travelling the world in search of life's meaning.

[TheFifthElement]

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. The story of a shipping clerk working for the Dutch East India Company out of Dejima (an artificial island created in the bay of Nagasaki) during the time of the Japanese isolation. Very interesting book.

[Pecksie]

Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster (English people in Italy). The cultural clash is one of the main issues of the novel.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Following a quick gander at the bookshelf:

"The Travels of Marco Polo"

"Heart of Darkness" - Joseph Conrad

Gilliatt

[andrewoberg]

Kafka's "The Castle" isn't about a foreigner per se, but it is certainly about an outsider feeling alienated and lost. Careful though, it's unfinished, and in fact the last page ends in the middle of a sentence!

[kelby_lake]

Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster (English people in Italy). The cultural clash is one of the main issues of the novel.

I've read it :D I liked it, actually.

[Tallon]

The Quiet American -Graham Greene

[Emil Miller]

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

[Taugenichts]

Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge might fit the bill - a Danish nobleman in Paris.

[bouquin]

Among some of the books I've read . . .

A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
My Antonia - Willa Cather
Fear and Trembling - Amelie Nothomb
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
A Room with a View - E.M. Forster
Out of Africa - Karen Blixen
Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow
The Map of Love - Ahdaf Soueif
Le Divorce - Diane Johnson
The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan
Tartarin de Tarascon - Alphonse Daudet

[JBI]

The Chinese novel Flowers in the Mirror by Li Ruzhen (Li Ju-chen) if you can get a hold of the translation is an hilarious read, which is like Swift, but less satirical in tone, and a lot more like Tristam Shandy, if that is one's thing, I would recommend it. The book has a nice cross between the thematic and the absurd, the satirical and the nonsensical.

[Jive One]

Checkout Shogun by James Clavell. It's generally about an Englishman's experiences in fuedal Japan, but set against a political backdrop that mirrors that dynamic as well.

[kelby_lake]

Any more? :D

[Joely B]

Burmese Days by George Orwell.

[Sancho]

Among some of the books I've read . . .

A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
My Antonia - Willa Cather
Fear and Trembling - Amelie Nothomb
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
A Room with a View - E.M. Forster
Out of Africa - Karen Blixen
Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow
The Map of Love - Ahdaf Soueif
Le Divorce - Diane Johnson
The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan
Tartarin de Tarascon - Alphonse Daudet


That, is a great list, in my humble opinion.

Try this one: In Patagonia, by Bruce Chatwin. It's not a novel, but it reads like one. An Englishman in Argentina.

[ladderandbucket]

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

[First thoughts]

Empire of the sun - J.G. Ballard

Coming from a child's perspective it offers something slightly different to most of the books in this sort of genre. Excellent book and film though