Recommendations for Eastern-Central European Literature?

[gruntingslime]

My favourite authors are Kafka, Witold Gombrowicz, Bruno Schulz, Roland Topor, Robert Walser, and Dostoevsky.

I've read Jaroslav Hasek, Gogol, and Robert Musil.

Does anyone have other suggestions like these?

[dfloyd]

The four major novels of Dostoyevsky should be read by everyone: The Idiot, The Possessed, Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov. You don't say which of these you have read. Chekov, Tolstoy, And Turgenev well give you hours of pleasure. Chekov wrote mostly short stories and plays, but he did write one novel: The Shooting Party.

[gruntingslime]

By Dostoevsky I've read The Double, Memoirs from the house of the Dead, Notes from the Underground, The Gambler, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Devils, The Adolescent, and The Brothers Karamazov... I've been considering picking up Insulted and Humiliated but since I've heard mixed things about it, I thought that maybe I should check out some other authors first.

I've read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and The Forged Coupon, and the Kreutzer Sonata, but for some reason I don't feel like I enjoy Tolstoy's writing. It seems somehow dry (although I'm aware of the contradiction particularly because The Kreutzer Sonata is anything but dry, but that's the only way I can describe my feelings)

Of Chekov and Turgenev, which do you recommend more? Is one of them more Dostoevsky than Tolstoy, or perhaps they are both completely unto themselves?

[Modest Proposal]

As far as Turgenev is concerned, Fathers and Sons is one of my favorite novels of all time. Chekov's short stories are without parallel.

Another Tolstoy work you might try, because it is short is "The Death of Ivan Illyich". I know you say you are not a fan of Tolstoy but this is one of THE great novellas.

Would you consider Kundera Eastern European? He writes in French/France but is an immigrant.

[gruntingslime]

I suppose I would count Milan Kundera as Eastern-Central European, but I've read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Joke, and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.

I'm sure a lot of those Russian books are classic, but I did just go through a very long stint of reading Russain classics of Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and some Pushkin...

Does anyone know any books from countries like Poland, Czech (I've read Vítězslav Nezval's Valerie and Her Week of Wonders), Hungary, Romania, books from countries like Slovenia, Croatia, and Slovakia for example (even though they're generally considered Southern Europe) ?

I've also already read much of Hesse and Thomas Mann...

[dfloyd]

so I wont suggest it. In English, the title is A Raw Youth. It is a little bit different from other Dostoevsky novels. The Insulted and the Injured is good if you haven't read it. It is not very long so you could round out your Dostoevsky reading with this one.

I would recommend the first works of Tolstory to get an idea of what he is about: Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. These novellas are usually bundled togeter in a single volume. I Just finished Tolstoy's last long novel, Resurrection. Tolstoy had given up his author's rights to all his work, but he wanted to help a group of Russsians emigrate to Canada and form a commune. The Canadian government gave their permission, but they wouldn't pay for their passage to Canada. So Tolstoy in his later years wrote Ressurection, a fairly good tale which will give some insight how he felt concerning religion in his later years. He used his income from Resurrection to pay for the migration. These Russian became Canadian citizens and their progeny still live in Canada. Of course, I have read the overly long War and Peace. I watched the classic Russian movie with English subtitles which helped me get through the unabridged novel.

Isaac Bashevis Singer is on my to-read list. He was a Polish Jew, and I don't know whether he wrote in English or Polish.

I want to read In the Penal Colony by Kafka, also The Castle.

While I can only read these authors in English, they are of tremendous interest to me.

[Jay]

Here's some Czech(oslovakian) authors you might be interested in reading - Karel Čapek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_%C4%8Capek), Bohumil Hrabal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohumil_Hrabal), Pavel Kohout (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Kohout) (The Hangwoman is mad fun in Czech - at least ages ago :p, no idea how it translated into English but I read it in one go), Arnošt Lustig (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno%C5%A1t_Lustig), Josef Škorecký (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_%C5%A0kvoreck%C3%BD) and Václav Havel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A1clav_Havel).

Can't say I've read many of Czech books other than those compulsory for school but these are writers I think get translated.

[Taliesin]

Hašek's "Good Soldier Švejk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk)" is also a nice book, a light and humorous reading.

EDIT: Oh, you mentioned Hašek already. Sorry, didn't see that one.

Also, Milorad Pavić is a Serbian writer, his Dictionary of The Khazars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_the_Khazars) is quite interesting, a novel in the form of a fictional dictionary/encyclopedia.

[gruntingslime]

Thank you for some of these last ones. It's a shame that a lot of those Czech writers don't seem to be readily available in English translation. It seems that a lot of Eastern-Central European literature is either unavailable or already out of print. I know a good translation of Witold Gombrowicz's Cosmos has gone out of print after only 6 years...

I can also add a couple in myself if anyone is interested:

The Melancholy of Resistance by Laszlo Krasznahorkai is a more recent work of Hungarian surrealism.

Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch is a more classical book from Austria.

Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz is a Polish author, essayist and play-write from around the same time as Gombrowicz and Bruno Schulz. Only one of his novels are translated into English and it is already out of print, you can find it for quite a hefty price on Amazon, but many of his plays are still available as well as a volume of compiled essays, letters, a couple plays and some excerpts of his novels.

I know I've already mentioned them a couple of times but Witold Gombrowicz and Bruno Schulz are authors that I strongly recommend. Bruno Schulz might come off as being a little more difficult, but if you're in the mood and have a little patience, I've found that my whole conception of literature, storytelling and even art in general has changed after reading Schulz.

More recommendations or discussions are welcome and appreciated!

[Modest Proposal]

Stanislaw Lem is a fairly widely read SF author hear. It's funny though, his most famous work is the very serious, even tragic 'Solaris' but most of the rest of his stuff is pretty humorous.

[Pryderi Agni]

Hungarian literature boasts many great authors, including but not exclusive to Kalman Mikszath, Endre Ady, Sandor Petofi, Mor Jokai, Istvan Orkeny and even Adam Nadasdy. Check them out; the older works are in digitized form at Gutenberg as well.