World Literature List

[Marbles]

Dear members,

We have had quite a few lists of top books on LitNet, some from the canon, others based on members personal tastes, etc. I am, however, wondering if we can have an inclusive list of books of World Literature, classics or contemporary, old or new, either in translation or written directly in English?

In other words I'm looking for representative works from (non-West European/American) linguistic and cultural traditions available in English.

I have no claim to a comprehensive knowledge as to which authors or books should be included in such a list. I have some names/titles, which I am going to type out below, in no particular order, and I ask members to make their suggestions.

Please exclude Russian works as they are already well known to English audience. Also exclude scriptures, ie, Quran, Mahabharta, Ramayana, Analects, etc.

Thanks in advance.


Kalidasa - Shakuntala (Sanstrkit)
Jalaluddin Rumi - The Mathnavi (Persian)
Omar Khayyam -Rubaiyat (Persian)
Rabindranath Tagore - Geetanjali (Bengali)
Murasaki Shikibu - The Tale of Genji (Japanese)
Muhammad Hussain Jah - Hoshruba: The Land and the Tilism (Urdu)
Wu Cheng'en - Journey to the West (Chinese)
Naguib Mahfouz - Cairo Trilogy, other books (Arabic)
Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart (English, Nigeria)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude, others (Spanish, Colombia)
Tayeb Salih - Season of Migration to the North (Arabic, Sudan)
Mohsin Hamid - The Reluctant Fundamentalist (English, Pakistan)
Yasunari Kawabata - The Sound of the Mountain, Snow Country (Japanese)
Jorge Luis Borges - The Aleph (Spanish, Argentina)
Mo Yan - Red Shorghum (Chinese)
Khalil Gibran - The Prophet, The Broken Wings (English, Arabic)
Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy (English, India)
Khushwant Singh - Delhi (English, India)
Richard Burton (translator) - A Thousand and One Nights (Arabic)
Lu Xun - Diary of a Madman and Other Stories (Chinese)
Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red, The Black book (Turkish)
Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being, other books (Czech)
Saadat Hasan Manto - Collected Stories (Urdu)
Pablo Neruda - Collected poetry (Spanish, Chile)
Abul Ala Al-Ma'arri - The Diwan (Arabic)
Paulo Coelho - The Alchemist (Portuguese, Brazil)
Faiz Ahmed Faiz - Collected poetry (Urdu)
Ismail Kadare - Palace of Dreams (Albanian)
Witold Gombrowicz - Pornographia (Polish)

You may find the list biased in favour of the Middle East and South Asia. It's just me. I focus more on those literatures than others.

[Lykren]

You missed some.

Red Chamber
Three Kingdoms
Heike
Jin Ping Mei

This list will soon be enormous. I'm not well-read enough to help much, obviously, but there are people on here who are.

[Frédéric Moreau]

The canonic book of Borges is 'Ficciones' ('Fictions') rather than 'El Aleph'. Of the South American literary boom I would add: Alejo Carpentier ('El siglo de las luces'), Marío Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortazar ('Rayuela'), Carlos Fuentes, Juan Carlos Onetti, Juan Rulfo ('Pedro Páramo'), Ernesto Sabato ('Sobre héroes y tumbas', 'El túnel'), Bioy Casares ('La invención de Morel'), Jorge Edwards and Cabrera Infante.

PS: There are some authors of whom I have not suggest any of their works, that is because it is hazardous to choose few works as their representative ones.

[wordeater]

Isabel Allende - La casa de los espiritus/The House of the Spirits (Spanish, Chile)
Guillermo Martínez - Acerca de Roderer/Regarding Roderer (Spanish, Argentina)
Knut Hamsun - Hunger/Sult (Norway)
Orhan Pamuk - Kar/Snow (Turkish)
Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood (Japanese)
J. M. Coetzee - Disgrace (English, South Africa)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun (English, Nigeria)

[JBI]

I think I posted a short sort of Chinese canon elsewhere, though I cannot find it now.

[SilvanDitties]

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa - Rashōmon, In a Grove, other stories (Japanese)
Sōseki Natsume - Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat, Light and Darkness (Japanese)
Jami - Haft Awrang (Persian)
Attar of Nishapur - Conference of the Birds (Persian)
Ferdowsi - Shahnameh (Persian)
Kazi Nazrul Islam - Bidrhoi (Bengali)
Adunis - Songs of Mihyar the Damascene (Arabic, Syria)
Benito Pérez Galdós - Episodios Nacionales (Spanish, Spain)
Machado de Assis - The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (Portuguese, Brazil)
Muhammed Husayn Haykal - Zaynab (Arabic, Egypt)

[Marbles]

Isabel Allende - La casa de los espiritus/The House of the Spirits (Spanish, Chile)
Guillermo Martínez - Acerca de Roderer/Regarding Roderer (Spanish, Argentina)
Knut Hamsun - Hunger/Sult (Norway)
Orhan Pamuk - Kar/Snow (Turkish)
Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood (Japanese)
J. M. Coetzee - Disgrace (English, South Africa)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun (English, Nigeria)

I just noticed I had intended to mention Snow along with My Name is Red but wrote The Black Book instead. Snow is definitely a better work than The Black Book. Thanks for reminding.


I think I posted a short sort of Chinese canon elsewhere, though I cannot find it now.

It'd be great if you could locate it.


Ryūnosuke Akutagawa - Rashōmon, In a Grove, other stories (Japanese)
Sōseki Natsume - Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat, Light and Darkness (Japanese)
Jami - Haft Awrang (Persian)
Attar of Nishapur - Conference of the Birds (Persian)
Ferdowsi - Shahnameh (Persian)
Kazi Nazrul Islam - Bidrhoi (Bengali)
Adunis - Songs of Mihyar the Damascene (Arabic, Syria)
Benito Pérez Galdós - Episodios Nacionales (Spanish, Spain)
Machado de Assis - The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (Portuguese, Brazil)
Muhammed Husayn Haykal - Zaynab (Arabic, Egypt)

Kazi Nazrul Islam, yes. How could I have missed him!

Is Jami's Yousuf and Zuleikha part of Haft Awrang? I recently read the former and would definitely put on the list of epics worth reading.

For poetry, I add Mahmoud Darwish the Palestinian poet and Nizar Qabbani, the Syrian: a poet of love and eroticism.

[Marbles]

Anyone beef up the list with African authors in particular? They seem to be in short supply on international lists no?

Here are a few epics and long poems from the Persian literature which are available in English for a long time but remain underappreciated.

Nizami Ganjavi - Haft Paykar, The Seven Beauties
Fakhruddin Asad Gurgani - Vis and Ramin, a love poem
Muhammad Iqbal - Asrar e Khudi, Secrets of the Self
Forough Farrokhzad - Sin: Selected poems
Ahmed Shamlou - translated selections
Simin Daneshvar - Savushun (a novel)

[JCamilo]

The canonic book of Borges is 'Ficciones' ('Fictions') rather than 'El Aleph'. Of the South American literary boom I would add: Alejo Carpentier ('El siglo de las luces'), Marío Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortazar ('Rayuela'), Carlos Fuentes, Juan Carlos Onetti, Juan Rulfo ('Pedro Páramo'), Ernesto Sabato ('Sobre héroes y tumbas', 'El túnel'), Bioy Casares ('La invención de Morel'), Jorge Edwards and Cabrera Infante.

PS: There are some authors of whom I have not suggest any of their works, that is because it is hazardous to choose few works as their representative ones.

Not really, El aleph is his best know short story after all, and both collections (Ficciones and El Aleph) were just a collection of works that were mostly published elsewhere. Anyways, they would form a very wrong vision of Borges, a poet who wrote short stories and essays to pay his bills. In the end, he does not have an edition representative enough to be considered canonic.

It is similar with Cortazar and Bioy, their body of work has more variety than Morel or Rayuela can represent.

[stlukesguild]

There has been a sizable three volume set of Borges' works in English that include Collected Fictions, Collected Poems, and Selected Non-Fictions. These need to be augmented with the addition of Seven Nights and Other Inquisitions (essays), The Book of Imaginary Beings, Labyrinths (which collects a few works not in the 3 volume set), and certainly Dream Tigers, a slim volume of fictions, essays, aphorisms, and poems that Borges' declared to be his greatest collection. I have all of these and at least another 5 or so volumes.

[stlukesguild]

Here are a few epics and long poems from the Persian literature which are available in English for a long time but remain underappreciated.

The question is just how good are the translations? There are many works of Renaissance and Baroque French literature, German Romantic poetry, Spanish literature prior to the 20th century, Russian literature prior to the mid-19th century that have suffered due to mediocre or leaden translations.

[JCamilo]

There has been a sizable three volume set of Borges' works in English that include Collected Fictions, Collected Poems, and Selected Non-Fictions. These need to be augmented with the addition of Seven Nights and Other Inquisitions (essays), The Book of Imaginary Beings, Labyrinths (which collects a few works not in the 3 volume set), and certainly Dream Tigers, a slim volume of fictions, essays, aphorisms, and poems that Borges' declared to be his greatest collection. I have all of these and at least another 5 or so volumes.

Borges oversaw many of his collections published in europe and USA while he was alive, sellecting the stories even for the Complete Works in Argentina (which are incomplete, since Borges said some texts are better if he hadn't writen it in first place). One of gifts of the american editions, is that Borges worked directly with the translators, translating and correcting some of his works to english himself.

But The book of imaginary beings and the book of dreams have little of his own work, there must be room for his works with Bioy Casares, which include some very funny short stories, Isidro Parado detective tales, movie scripts... I would inclue some of borges interviews besides and some chapters of his english class in Buenos Aires university. They are amazing readings. Now, his widow, Maria Kodama is a ***** that places lots of obstacles to publish some works of borges, specially those he did with Bioy or Alcia Jurado...

To add: Borges translated many works from english, which includes Shakespeare. I would love to have my hands in a sellection of his translations...

[stlukesguild]

Pär Lagerkvist- Barrabas & The Dwarf (Swedish)
Stig Dagerman- The Games of Night (Swedish)
Jaroslav Seifert- The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert (Czech)
Karel Čapek- War with the Newts (Czech)
Jan Potocki- The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (Polish)
Czeslaw Milosz- New and Collected Poems (Polish)
Zbigniew Herbert- Collected Poems (Polish)
Adam Zagajewski- Mysticism for Beginners: Poems, Without End, Eternal Enemies & Unseen Hand (Polish)
Wisława Szymborska- View with a Grain of Sand, Here, and Poems New and Collected (Polish)
Octavio Paz- The Collected Poems, Sunstone, In Light of India (Mexican)
Homero Aridjis- Eyes to See Otherwise (Mexican)
César Vallejo- The Complete Poetry, The Complete Posthumous Poetry (Peru)
Edmond Jabès- The Book of Questions (Jewish/Egyptian/French)
Pablo Neruda- Residence Earth, The Captain's Verses, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, Canto General, The Book of Questions (Chile)
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis- The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, Dom Casmurra (Brazil)
Alejo Carpentier- Explosion in a Cathedral, The Kingdom of this World, Baroque Concerto (Cuba)
Yehuda Amichai- Open, Closed, Open & Selected Poetry (Israel/Hebrew)

[Marbles]

Here are a few epics and long poems from the Persian literature which are available in English for a long time but remain underappreciated.

The question is just how good are the translations? There are many works of Renaissance and Baroque French literature, German Romantic poetry, Spanish literature prior to the 20th century, Russian literature prior to the mid-19th century that have suffered due to mediocre or leaden translations.

This is very true. But of the epics I mentioned Vis and Ramin has seen a recent translation from the very able Dick Davis (http://www.amazon.com/Ramin-Penguin-Classics-Fakhraddin-Gorgani/dp/0143105620). There's been another translation available from 1970s but I am not able to comment on that.

Professor Julie Scott Meisami attempted to translate The Seven Beauties of Nizami Ganjavi a couple of decades-or-so ago. I have only read excerpts in an anthology. The problem is cheap availability of the translation. The price of the book makes sure it doesn't reach ordinary readers and remains within the world of academia and specialisation which is such a pity. I hope resourceful cultural organisations that want to promote their literary heritage would come forward and subsidise such classical prints and make them affordable for the lay readers.

Iqbal's Secrets of the Self has undergone numerous translations, in part or in whole, but the richest translation remains by no other than the doyen of Farsi literature, professor R.A. Nicholson, the original translater of Rumi's Masnavi/Mathnavi. Full text available here: http://sacred-texts.com/isl/iq/index.htm


Pär Lagerkvist- Barrabas & The Dwarf (Swedish)
Stig Dagerman- The Games of Night (Swedish)
Jaroslav Seifert- The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert (Czech)
Karel Čapek- War with the Newts (Czech)
Jan Potocki- The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (Polish)
Czeslaw Milosz- New and Collected Poems (Polish)
Zbigniew Herbert- Collected Poems (Polish)
Adam Zagajewski- Mysticism for Beginners: Poems, Without End, Eternal Enemies & Unseen Hand (Polish)
Wisława Szymborska- View with a Grain of Sand, Here, and Poems New and Collected (Polish)
Octavio Paz- The Collected Poems, Sunstone, In Light of India (Mexican)
Homero Aridjis- Eyes to See Otherwise (Mexican)
César Vallejo- The Complete Poetry, The Complete Posthumous Poetry (Peru)
Edmond Jabès- The Book of Questions (Jewish/Egyptian/French)
Pablo Neruda- Residence Earth, The Captain's Verses, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, Canto General, The Book of Questions (Chile)
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis- The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, Dom Casmurra (Brazil)
Alejo Carpentier- Explosion in a Cathedral, The Kingdom of this World, Baroque Concerto (Cuba)
Yehuda Amichai- Open, Closed, Open & Selected Poetry (Israel/Hebrew)

Excellent additions. Thank you.

[mortalterror]

1955 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (Russia)
1955 The Emperor of Ice Cream by Wallace Stevens (USA)
1955 Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo (Mexico)
1954 Sunstone by Octavio Paz (Mexico)
1954 Lord of the Flies by William Golding (Britain)
1953 Gimpel, the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Poland)
1953 Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett (Ireland)
1952 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (USA)
1952 The Shield of Achilles by W.H. Auden (Britain)
1952 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (USA)
1952 The Financial Expert by R.K. Narayan (India)
1951 Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas (Britain)
1951 The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (USA)
1950 Canto General by Pablo Neruda (Chile)
1950 The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco (Romania)
1949 1984 by George Orwell (Britain)
1949 Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (USA)
1948 The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki (Japan)
1948 The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht (Germany)
1948 A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (USA)
1948 Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata (Japan)
1947 Fortress Besieged Qian Zhongshu (China)
1945 Rescue by Czeslaw Milosz (Poland)
1944 No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre (France)
1944 Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)
1944 The Dwarf by Par Lagerkvist (Sweden)
1942 The Stranger by Albert Camus (France)
1942 Antigone by Jean Anouilh (France)
1939 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (USA)
1938 The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis (Greece)
1937 Out of Africa by Isak Dineson (Denmark)
1937 The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat (Iran)
1935 Wings of Gabriel by Muhammad Iqbal (India)
1935 Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias by Federico Garcia Lorca (Spain)
1934 Message by Fernando Pessoa (Portugal)
1933 Man's Fate by Andre Malraux (France)
1932 Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine (France)
1932 The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil (Austria)
1929 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (USA)
1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence (Britain)
1927 Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse (Germany)
1926 Capital of Pain by Paul Eluard (France)
1925 Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Britain)
1925 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (USA)
1925 Cuttlefish Bones by Eugenio Montale (Italy)
1924 The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (Germany)
1924 Anabase by Saint-John Perse (France)
1923 The True Story of Ah Q by Lu Xun (China)
1923 The Prophet by Khalil Gibran (Lebanon)
1923 Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo (Italy)
1922 The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot (USA)
1922 In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (France)
1922 Duino Elegies by Ranier Maria Rilke (Germany)
1921 Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello (Italy)
1920 Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (USA)
1920 Hugh Selwyn Mauberley by Ezra Pound (USA)
1919 The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats (Ireland)
1918 Ulysses by James Joyce (Ireland)
1918 The Hellscreen by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Japan)
1918 The Black Heralds by Cesar Vallejo (Peru)
1917 The Young Fate by Paul Valery (France)
1915 The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (Czechoslovakia)
1915 The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford (Britain)
1915 Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (Britain)
1914 Kokoro by Natsume Soseki (Japan)
1914 Mending Wall by Robert Frost (USA)
1913 Alcohol by Guillaume Apollinaire (France)
1911 Ithaca by Constantine P. Cavafy (Greece)
1910 Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore (India)
1910 Peruvian Traditions by Ricardo Palma (Peru)
1907 The Ghost Sonata by August Strindberg (Sweden)
1907 The Travels of Lao Ts'an by Liu E (China)
1906 Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind (Germany)
1905 Songs of Life and Hope by Ruben Dario (Nicaragua)
1904 The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (Russia)
1903 Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw (Ireland)
1903 The Call of the Wild by Jack London (USA)
1903 The Ambassadors by Henry James (USA)
1902 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (Britain)
1902 The Immoralist by Andre Gide (France)
1902 The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky (Russia)
1902 The Rain in the Pinewood by Gabriele D'Annunzio (Italy)
1901 Kim by Rudyard Kipling (Britain)
1900 La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler (Austria)
19th Century
1899 Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis
1897 Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson
1897 Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
1897 La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler
1896 A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Housman
1896 Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry
1896 The Seagull by Anton Chekhov
1894 Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw
1894 The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
1892 The Weavers by Gerhart Hauptmann
1892 Poems by Ho Xuan Huong
1891 Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind
1891 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
1891 Simple Verses by Jose Marti
1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
1890 Hunger by Knut Hamsun
1890 Poems by Emily Dickinson
1888 Azul by Ruben Dario
1888 The Maias by Eca de Queiros
1888 Miss Julie by August Strindberg
1887 A Study in Scarlett by Arthur Conan Doyle
1885 The Makado by Gillbert and Sullivan
1885 Germinal by Emile Zola
1884 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
1884 Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans
1883 Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
1881 The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
1880 The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1880 Ball of Fat by Guy De Maupassant
1879 A Doll's House by Heinrik Ibsen
1877 Six Records of a Floating Life by Shen Fu
1876 Afternoon of a Faun by Stephane Mallarme
1876 The Wreck of the Deutschland by Gerard Manley Hopkins
1874 The City of Dreadful Night by James Thomson
1873 A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud
1872 Martin Fierro by Jose Hernandez
1872 Middlemarch by George Eliot
1871 Rhymes and Legends by Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
1869 The Songs of Maldoror by Comte de Lautreamont
1869 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
1866 Saturnine Poems by Paul Verlaine
1865 Hymn to Satan by Giosue Carducci
1865 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll
1862 Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
1862 Goblin Market and other Poems by Christina Rossetti
1862 Divan by Mirza Ghalib
1862 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
1859 Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
1859 A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
1859 The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward FitzGerald
1859 The Storm by Aleksandr Ostrovsky
1857 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
1857 Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
1856 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
1855 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
1854 Elegy for Imam Hussein by Qa'ani
1853 El Desdichado by Gerard de Nerval
1853 Poems by Bibi Hayati
1851 Moby Dick by Hermann Melville
1850 The Scarlett Letter by Nathanael Hawthorne
1850 Sonnets From the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1850 Death's Jest Book by Thomas Lovell Beddoes
1849 In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred Lord Tennyson
1849 The Kalevala by Elias Lonnrot
1848 The Lady of the Camellias by Alexander Dumas, fils
1848 Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
1847 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
1847 Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1847 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
1847 The Shark by Dionysios Solomos
1846 The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
1846 Toldi by Janos Arany
1845 Janos Vitez by Sandor Petofi
1844 The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, Pere
1844 The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen
1842 Dramatic Lyrics by Robert Browning
1842 Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
1842 Eight Dog Chronicles by Kyokutei Bakin
1842 The Complete Works of Friedrich Holderlin
1841 A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov
1837 Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
1835 Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac
1835 Danton's Death by Georg Buchner
1834 Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz
1832 Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1831 Kanshi by Taigu Ryokan
1830 The Red and the Black by Stendhal
1827 Book of Songs by Heinrich Heine
1827 The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
1826 The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
1824 Don Juan by George Gordon Byron
1821 First Idylls by Giacomo Leopardi
1821 Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey
1819 Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
1819 Oraga Haru by Kobayashi Issa
1818 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
1818 Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
1818 Endymion by John Keats
1818 Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
1817 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1816 The Sandman by ETA Hoffman
1813 The Tale of Kieu by Nguyen Du
1813 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
1812 Grimms' Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
1808 Milton: a poem by William Blake
1807 Poems in Two Volumes by William Wordsworth
1805 The Broken Jug by Heinrich von Kleist
1804 William Tell by Friedrich Schiller
1802 Rene by Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand
1800 Hymns to the Night by Novalis
18th century
1798 Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge
1798 Sorrows of an Abandoned Queen by Nguyen Gia Thieu
1798 The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis by Ugo Foscolo
1797 Poems by Yuan Mei
1796 Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Diderot
1794 A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns
1791 Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
1791 Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
1791 Justine by Marquis de Sade
1790 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
1789 The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
1789 Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake
1784 The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre Beaumarchais
1783 The Village George Crabbe
1782 The Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos
1782 Saul by Vittorio Alfieri
1781 The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller
1780 Oberon by Christoph Martin Wieland
1777 The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
1774 The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1767 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
1767 Wingolf by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
1767 Minna von Barnhelm by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
1766 The Vicar of Wakefield Oliver Goldsmith
1765 The Works of Ossian by James Macpherson
1761 The Love For Three Oranges by Carlo Gozzi
1761 Julie, or the New Heloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1759 Candide by Voltaire
1751 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray
1750 The Rambler by Samuel Johnson
1750 The Scholars by Wu Jingzi
1749 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
1748 Chushingura by Takeda Izumo
1743 The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni
1740 Pamela by Samuel Richardson
1740 Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling
1734 An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope
1730 The Game of Love and Chance by Marivaux
1728 The Beggar's Opera by John Gay
1726 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
1722 Jeppe of the Hill by Ludvig Holberg
1721 Persian Letters by Montesquieu
1719 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
1715 The Battles of Coxinga by Chikamatsu Monzaemon
1713 Cato by Joseph Addison
1711 The Spectator by Richard Steel
1709 Turcaret by Alain-Rene Lesage
1707 The Beaux Stratagem by George Farquhar
1700 The Way of the World by William Congreve
17th century
1694 Fables by Jean de La Fontaine
1694 The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Matsuo Basho
1685 Five Women Who Loved Love by Ihara Saikaku
1684 Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery by John Wilmot
1682 Venice Preserv'd by Thomas Otway
1678 The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
1678 Maximes by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
1678 All For Love by John Dryden
1678 The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
1677 The Rover by Aphra Behn
1677 The Campaign Against Qandahar by Saib Tabrizi
1677 Phaedra by Jean Racine
1676 The Man of Mode by George Etherege
1675 The Country Wife by William Wycherley
1674 Paradise Lost by John Milton
1674 The Latrine by Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux
1668 Letters of a Portuguese Nun by Anonymous
1668 Simplicius Simplicissimus by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen
1664 Tartuffe by Moliere
1654 Lucifer by Joost van den Vondel
1653 The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton
1650 To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell
1636 Le Cid by Pierre Corneille
1635 Life is a Dream by Pedro Calderon de la Barca
1633 'Tis Pity She's a Whore by John Ford
1633 The Temple by George Herbert
1633 Works of John Donne
1630 The Trickster of Seville by Tirso de Molina
1626 The Swindler by Francisco de Quevedo
1625 Essays by Francis Bacon
1621 Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton
1620 Stories to Awaken the World by Feng Menglong
1619 Fuente Ovejuna by Lope De Vega
1619 Idea by Michael Drayton
1619 The Maid's Tragedy by John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont
1616 Les Tragiques by Agrippa D'Aubigne
1615 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
1613 The Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea by Luis de Gongora
1612 The White Devil by John Webster
1610 Jin Ping Mei by Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng
1608 The Revenger's Tragedy by Thomas Middleton
1606 Volpone by Ben Jonson
1600 Erotokritos by Vitsentzos Kornaros
1600 Hamlet by William Shakespeare
1600 The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd by Sir Walter Ralegh
16th century
1598 Consolation for Mr. du Perier by Francois de Malherbe
1598 Every Man in His Humor by Ben Jonson
1596 The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
1594 Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
1592 The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd
1592 A Litany in Time of Plague by Thomas Nashe
1589 The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe
1587 When You Are Truly Old by Pierre de Ronsard
1586 Astrophel and Stella by Philip Sydney
1581 Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso
1578 Euphues by John Lyly
1573 Farewell with a Mischief by George Gascoigne
1572 The Lusiads by Luis vaz de Camoes
1569 The Araucana by Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga
1564 Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
1558 The Heptameron by Marguerite de Navarre
1557 They Flee From Me by Thomas Wyatt
1555 The Regrets by Joachim du Bellay
1554 Lazarillo de Tormes by Anonymous
1541 Bovo-Bukh by Elia Levita
1532 Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto
1528 The Book of the Courtier by Baltissar Castiglione
1526 Hell by Clement Marot
1522 The Great Lutheran Fool by Thomas Murner
1521 Colin Clout by John Skelton
1518 Songs of Kabir
1518 The Mandrake by Niccolo Machiavelli
1516 Utopia by Sir Thomas More
1509 In Praise of Folly by Erasmus
1505 Lament for the Makaris by William Dunbar
1501 Judita by Marko Marulic
1501 Book of Margery Kempe
15th century
1499 La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas
1495 Orlando In Love by Matteo Maria Boiardo
1494 The Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brant
1492 Poems by Lorenzo de Medici
1490 Tirant Lo Blanc by Joanot Martorell and Marti Joan de Galba
1485 Haft Awrang by Jami
1485 Everyman by Anonymous
1485 Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory
1483 Morgante by Luigi Pulci
1482 Khamsa by Ali-Shir Nava'i
1480 Manto by Poliziano
1476 Stanzas on His Father's Death by Jorge Manrique
1461 Ballad of the Dead Ladies by Francois Villon
1440 Poems by Charles Duke of Orleans
1428 Book 13 of the Aeneid by Maffeo Vegio
1424 La Belle Dame sans Merci by Alain Chartier
1420 The Siege of Thebes by John Lydgate
1405 Book of the City of Ladies by Christine De Pizan
Medieval Literature (Europe)
1400 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
1390 Confessio Amantis by John Gower
1390 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Anonymous
1387 Piers Plowman by William Langland
1375 The Bruce by John Barbour
1374 The Canzoniere by Francesco Petrarch
1353 The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
1321 Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
1300 Grettis Saga by Anonymous
1300 A Lady Asks Me by Guido Cavalcanti
1290 Havelok the Dane by Anonymous
1280 Njal's Saga by Anonymous
1276 The Gentle Heart by Guido Guinizelli
1275 Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun
1270 Elder Edda by Anonymous
1260 Laxdaela Saga by Anonymous
1250 Thorstein the Staff-Struck by Anonymous
1240 Egil's Saga by Anonymous
1225 Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach
1220 Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson
1210 Nibelungenlied by Anonymous
1210 On this gay and slender tune by Arnaut Daniel
1210 Tristan and Isolt by Gottfried von Strassburg
1207 Song of the Cid by Abbot Peter
1200 Under the Linden Tree by Walther von der Vogelweide
1200 Aucassin and Nicolette by Anonymous
1190 Mabinogion by Anonymous
1190 Tale of Igor's Campaign by Anonymous
1190 Henry the Leper by Hartmann von Aue
1184 The Joyful Springtime Pleases Me by Bertran de Born
1180 When I See the Lark by Bernart de Ventadorn
1175 The Werewolf by Marie de France
1170 Yvain the Knight of the Lion by Chretien de Troyes
1163 The Confession by The Archpoet
1160 Tain Bo Cuailnge by Anonymous
1144 Letters of Abelard and Heloise
1141 Ode to Zion by Judah Halevi
1100 Under the Sun I Ride Along by William IX Duke of Aquitaine
1098 Song of Roland by Anonymous
1050 Digenes Akritas by Anonymous
991 The Battle of Maldon by Anonymous
937 The Battle of Brunanburh by Anonymous
850 Beowulf by Anonymous
850 The Phoenix by Anonymous
841 The Battle of Fontenoy by Angilbert
840 Elene by Cynewulf
830 Lay of Hildebrand by Anonymous
800 Finnsburg Fragment by Anonymous
680 Dream of the Rood by Caedmon
675 Y Gododdin by Aneirin
524 Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
Classical literature (Western)
400AD Nonnus- Dionysiacca
354-430AD St. Augustine- Confessions
250AD Heliodorus- Ethiopica
213-273AD Longinus- On the Sublime
150-235AD Cassius Dio- Roman History
150AD Longus- Daphnis and Chloe
143-176AD Pausanias- Description of Greece
129-199AD Galen- Medical Writing
125-180AD Apuleius- The Golden ***
125-180AD Lucian- True Story
125-180AD Aulus Gellius- Attic Nights
121-180AD Marcus Aurelius- Meditations
95-165AD Appian- Roman History
90-168AD Ptolemy- The Great Treatise
86-160AD Arrian- The Anabasis of Alexander
69-130AD Suetonius- Lives of 12 Caesars
61-112AD Pliny the Younger- Letters
56-117AD Tacitus- Annals
55-138AD Juvenal- Satires
55-135AD Epictetus- Discourses
46-120AD Plutarch- Lives
45-96AD Statius- Thebaid
40-104AD Martial- Epigrams
39-65AD Lucan- Pharsalia
37-100AD Josephus- The Jewish War
35-100AD Quintillian- Institutes of Oratory
34-62AD Persius- Satires
27-66AD Petronius- Satyricon
23-79AD Pliny the Elder- Natural History
4BC-65AD Seneca- Thyestes
43BC-17AD Ovid- Metamorphoses
50-15BC Sextus Propertius- Elegies
55-19BC Tibullus- Elegies
59BC-17AD Livy- History of Rome
60-7BC Dionysus of Halicarnassus- On Imitation
64BC-24AD Strabo- Geography
65-8BC Horace- Odes
70-19BC Virgil- The Aeneid
84-54BC Catullus- Poem 107
86-35BC Sallust- The Catiline Conspiracy
100-44BC Caesar- The Gallic War
106-43BC Cicero- Dream of Scipio
195-159BC Terence- The Brothers
200-118BC Polybius- The Histories
204-270BC Plotinus- Enneads
254-184BC Plautus- The Pot of Gold
300-246BC Apollonius Rhodius- Argonautika
310-250BC Theocritus- Idylls
310-240BC Callimachus- Aetia
323-283BC Euclid- Elements
342-291BC Menander- The Miser
361-291BC Dinarchus- Speeches
371-287BC Theophrastus- On Character
384-322BC Demosthenes- On the Crown
384-322BC Aristotle- Nichomachean Ethics
389-314BC Aeschines- Speeches
390-322BC Hypereides- Speeches
396-323BC Lycurgus- Speeches
420-348BC Isaeus- Speeches
424-348BC Plato- Republic
430-354BC Xenophon- Anabasis
436-338BC Isocrates- Panathenaicus
445-380BC Lysias- Speeches
446-386BC Aristophanes- Lysistrata
460-395BC Thucydides- History of the Peloponnesian War
480-406BC Euripides- Medea
484-425BC Herodotus- Histories
497-405BC Sophocles- Oedipus Rex
522-443BC Pindar- Victory Odes
525-456BC Aeschylus- Oresteia
582-485BC Anacreon- Love's Night Walk
620-564BC Aesop- The Fox and the Grapes
630-570BC Sappho- Hymn to Aphrodite
680-645BC Archilochus- Be Bold
700-500BC Homeric Hymns
750BC Hesiod- Theogony
750BC Homer- The Iliad

[mortalterror]

Various (2400-700BC) Egyptian Book of the Dead
Anonymous (1800BC) Story of Sinuhe
Anonymous (1800BC) Epic of Gilgamesh
Anonymous (1600BC) Enuma Elis
Various (1000-700BC) Book of Odes
Kabti-ilani-Marduk (764BC) Epic of Erra
Vyasa (400BC) Mahabharata
Valmiki (350BC) Ramayana
Qu Yuan (340-278BC) and Song Yu (290-223BC) Chu Ci
Vishnu Sharma (300BC) Panchatantra
Sudraka (150BC) The Little Clay Cart
Various (347-759) Manyoshu
Tao Qian (365-427) Poems
Kalidasa (370-450) Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection, Meghaduta
Bhartrhari (450) Satakatraya
Xu Ling (507-583) New Songs From the Jade Terrace
Various (550) Mu'allaqat
Bharavi (550) Kiratarjuniya
Muhammad (570-632) Quran
Dandin (600) The Adventures of the Ten Princes
Wang Wei (699-759) Poems
Bhavabhuti (700) Málati and Mádhava
Amaru (700) Amarusataka
Li Bai (701-762) Tianmu Mountain Ascended in a Dream
Du Fu (712-770) The Song of the Wagons
Han-shan (730-850) Cold Mountain Poems
Han Yu (768-824) Essays
Bai Juyi (772-846) Song of Unending Sorrow, Song of the Lute Player
Yuan Zhen (779-831) Biography of Ying Ying
Various (800-920) Kokinshu
Various (800-1200) Antar, A Bedoueen Romance
Rudaki (858-941) Lament in Old Age
Various (900-1300) One Thousand and One Nights
Al-Mutanabbi (915-965) Poems
Li Houzhu (937-978) Poems
Ferdowsi (940-1020) Shahnameh
Sei Shonagon (966-1017) The Pillow Book
Al-Ma'arri (973-1058) The Spark of Flint
Murasaki Shikibu (973-1025) Tale of Genji
Nasir Khusraw (1004-1088) Poems
Su Shi (1037-1101) Poems
Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) Rubaiyat
Vidyakara (1050-1130) Treasury of Verses
Moses Ibn Ezra (1055-1138) Diwan
Judah Halevi (1075-1141) Poems
Li Qingzhao (1084-1151) Poems
Mahadeviyakka (1100) Poems
Khaqani (1121-1190) Gift of the Two Iraqs
Anvari (1126-1189) Tears of Khorasan
Nezami (1141-1209) Khamsa
Attar (1145-1221) Conference of the Birds
Kamban (1150) Ramavataram
Sa'di (1184-1283) Gulistan, Bostan
Jayadeva (1200) Gita Govinda
Rumi (1207-1273) Masnavi
Fakhruddin Iraqi (1213-1289) Divine Flashes
Guan Hanqing (1225-1302) Injustice to Dou E
Bai Renfu (1226-1306) Rain on the Paulownia Tree
Wang Shifu (1250-1307) Romance of the Western Chamber
Ma Zhiyuan (1250-1321) Autumn in Han Palace
Amir Khusrau (1253-1325) Second Divan
Yoshida Kenko (1283-1350) Essays in Idleness
Shi Nai'an (1296-1372) Water Margin
Ubayd Zakani (1300-1370) Ethics of the Aristocrats
Kakuichi (1300-1371) The Tale of the Heike
Gao Zecheng (1305-1368) Romance of the Lute
Hafez (1329-1380) Divan
Luo Guanzhong (1330-1400) Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Jami (1414-1492) Haft Awrang
Kabir (1440-1518) Songs
Ali-Shir Nava'i (1441-1501) Poetry
Fuzuli (1483-1556) Diwan
Wu Cheng'en (1500-1582) Journey To the West
Baki (1526-1600) Elegy for His Excellency Suleyman Khan
Tulsidas (1532-1623) The Ramcharitmanasa
Tang Xianzu (1550-1616) The Peony Pavilion
Feng Menglong (1574-1645) Stories to Awaken the World
Sa'ib (1601-1677) The Campaign Against Qandahar
Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng (1610) Jin Ping Mei
Pu Songling (1640-1715) Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio
Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) Narrow Road to the Deep North
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725) The Battles of Coxinga
Takeda Izumo (1691-1756) Chushingura
Wu Jingzi (1701-1754) The Scholars
Cao Xueqin (1715-1763) Dream of The Red Chamber
Yuan Mei (1716-1798) Poems
Mir Taqi Mir (1723-1810) Ghazals
Nguyen Gia Thieu (1741-1798) Sorrows of an Abandoned Queen
Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831) Haiku
Shen Fu (1763-1825) Six Records of a Floating Life
Nguyen Du (1766-1820) The Tale of Kieu
Ho Xuan Huong (1772-1822) Water-Bailing
Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) Ghazals
Bibi Hayati (1853) Poems
Qa'ani (1808-1854) Elegy for Imam Hussein
Liu E (1857-1909) The Travels of Lao Ts'an
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) Gitanjali
Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) Kokoro
Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) Wings of Gabriel
Lu Xun (1881-1936) Ah Q - The Real Story
Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) The Prophet
Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) The Makioka Sisters
Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) The Hell Screen
Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) Snow Country
Sadegh Hedayat (1903-1951) The Blind Owl
R.K. Narayan (1906-2001) The Financial Expert
Qian Zhongshu (1910-1998) Fortress Besieged
Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) The Sea of Fertility
Adunis (1930-) Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs
V.S. Naipaul (1932-) A House For Mr. Biswas
Salman Rushdie (1947-) Midnight's Children
Haruki Murakami (1949-) The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
Orhan Pamuk (1952-) My Name is Red
Khaled Hosseini (1965-) The Kite Runner

[Marbles]

^ Wow. This is some list. Cheers.

Any works from Africa or African languages? Anyone?

[Snowqueen]

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I haven't read it though.

I was about to say Gabriel's Wing (Baal-e-Jibreel) by Iqbal, but it has already been mentioned by mortalterror. Ghalib is another great poet of Indian sub-continent, but I think there is no translation available of his poetry.

[Marbles]

Purple HibiscusGhalib is another great poet of Indian sub-continent, but I think there is no translation available of his poetry.

Plenty of translations of Mirza Ghalib are available. In fact, his whole Divan is available in good translation. Here are some books to look for

1.Ralph Russell - Life, Letters, and Ghazals

2. K C Kanda - Selected Lyrics and Letters

Both have brief biographies, translations of some of his trend-setting, highly acclaimed letters as well a selection of both his Persian and Urdu ghazal poems.

3. Frances W. Pritchett - A Desertful of Roses: The Urdu Ghazals of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

All Urdu ghazals of Ghalib are translated and multiple commentaries of notable Ghalib exegetes are also translated for perspective. It's an online project and freely available at the website of Columbia university where the professor taught Urdu. Take a gander, LOOK UP (http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ghalib/index.html?#index)

[Snowqueen]

I admit I didn't know about these translations. Thanks for sharing Marbles.

[Marbles]

I admit I didn't know about these translations. Thanks for sharing Marbles.

You are welcome. I thought Ghalib's translations were well known in the West but talking to many people I came to the conclusion that they're not. This poet is a genius of ghazal the world has still yet to discover in good translation. Ralph Russell was a wonderful scholar but his translations are rather literal and prose-like. Similar problems attend to F.S. Pritchett's but some of her translations are excellent.

I believe the problem is with the difficulty of translating a ghazal poem with its two-line couplets along with proper rhyme and refrain which read like independent poems. So if a ghazal has five couplets they can be treated as five separate, stand-alone poems. But it's a very very difficult way of translating while keeping fidelity to the original verse. Some scholars translate ghazal freely and often break couplets into stanzas, which corrupts the original form, and that makes it anything but a translation of a ghazal.

In any case, I'd like to see a good translator to work on Ghalib in a way as to bring his poetry alive.

[Snowqueen]

Poets like Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz are not very popular in the west. I think their works suffers due to mediocre translations.
As you can see there are only a handful of Litnetters who are familiar with the word “Ghazal” and they are from Indian subcontinent.
I haven't gone through the translations myself because I usually prefer to enjoy ghazals in Urdu. Nothing can match that! But I've read translation of some of Manto's short stories by an unknown author and they were actually quite good.

Nice choice of avatar, by the way. That's Omar Khayyam, right?

[Marbles]

Poets like Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz are not very popular in the west. I think their works suffers due to mediocre translations.
As you can see there are only a handful of Litnetters who are familiar with the word “Ghazal” and they are from Indian subcontinent.
I haven't gone through the translations myself because I usually prefer to enjoy ghazals in Urdu. Nothing can match that! But I've read translation of some of Manto's short stories by an unknown author and they were actually quite good.

Nice choice of avatar, by the way. That's Omar Khayyam, right?

I agree with you about the lack of popularity of the ghazal genre. I believe it's much due to the fact that the poetics of ghazal do not agree with the poetics of Western languages. There's nothing remotely similar in English and other Western languages which can sufficiently approximate the form and technique required to write a good ghazal; it's a very peculiar quality of the Indo-Persian languages. So what happens that the nuance and the art is often lost during translation of a ghazal even if that translation is a good one. Not to mention that there's no single agreed-upon method among the translators about translating ghazal poems.

It is relevant to mention Agha Shahid Ali, the Kashmir-American poet, in this regard. He single-handedly introduced ghazal to the West, which inspired a few English poets, e.g; Gene Doty, to write English ghazals. I don't remember the name of Agha Shahid's book (Google should be able to find it) in which he explained the art and also translated a few good ghazals by being as faithful to form and technique as was humanly possible. It was really good.

As for translations of the poets you mentioned, I think Iqbal has been translated fairly well, esp by R.A. Nicholson who translated his Secrets of the Self (Asrar-e Khudi). 'The Wing of Gabriel' is also available in translation. The 'problem' might be that Iqbal is too philosophical a poet for average poetry enthusiasts, and he belongs to a long tradition of poets who wrote dense epics in the old mould, apart from writing lyrical poems. A few of his ghazals I have seen translated but I can't recall them. Khushwant Singh translated Iqbal's long poem 'A Dialogue with Allah' [Shikwa Javab-e Shikwa]. It's a fantastic effort and remains one of my favourites.

Ghalib remains elusive in English, not only because of the difficulty in translating ghazal I spoke of earlier, but also because his language and thought themselves are so complex as to bamboozle a person even if they are reading them directly in Urdu or Persian. These two factors make it very hard to come up with a representative translation of Ghalib's language and craft, I reckon.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz, on the other hand, is fairly well-known among people who read world poetry in translation. The veritable V.G. Kiernan's translations of Faiz's selected poetry are excellent (so is his essay on the art of Faiz). Agha Shahid Ali and Naomi Lazard also produced good translations. Faiz is a modern poet and speaks to the modern sensibilities much more than Iqbal or Ghalib. Maybe that's why he has a certain following in poetry enthusiasts round the world.

And yes, it's a portrait of Omar Khayyam in my display picture. I have a passion for his Rubaiyat since the time when I first read them at the age of 16 :)

[Marcus1]

Any works from Africa or African languages? Anyone?

I'm no expert on African literature, but I've read these and enjoyed them a lot:

Cry, the Beloved Country (Alan Paton)
So Long a Letter (Mariama Ba)
A Grain of Wheat / The River Between (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o)


And here's Africa's 100 Best Books of the 20th century from African History website. Top 10 as follows:

Chinua ACHEBE
(Nigeria) Things Fall Apart
Meshack ASARE
(Ghana) Sosu’s Call
Mariama BÂ
(Senegal) Une Si Longue Lettre
(Trans. So Long A Letter)
Mia COUTO
(Mozambique) Terra Sonambula
Tsitsi DANGAREMBGA
(Zimbabwe) Nervous Conditions
Cheikh Anta DIOP
(Senegal) Antériorité Des Civilisations Nègres
Assia DJEBAR
(Algeria) L’Amour La Fantasia
Naguib MAHFOUZ
(Egypt) The Cairo Trilogy
Thomas Mokopu MOFOLO
(Lesotho) Chaka
NGUGI wa Thiong’o
(Kenya) A Grain Of Wheat
Léopold Sédar SENGHOR
(Senegal) Oeuvre Poétique
Wole SOYINKA
(Nigeria) Ake: The Years of Childhood