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I am brazilian and I've got to tell you that we have some amazing literary works. If you're interested, you could try Machado de Assis - Dom Casmurro. It was an wonderful experience reading this one. Also, I think you could check out José Saramago from Portugal and Mia Couto from Mozambique :)
13. Mexico - Rasero by Francisco RebolledoQuote:
Japan - Kafka On the Shore by Haruki Murakami
2. Russia - Demons by Dostoevsky
3. France - The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Dumas
4. England - Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
5. India - Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
6. Sweden - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
7. Canada - World of Wonders by Robertson Davies
8. Turkey - My Name Is Red by Orhand Pamuk
9. Norway - The Wife by Sigrid Undset
10. Portugal - Blindness by Jose Saramago
11. Germany - Faust by Goethe
12. Spain - The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
For Hungary, might I suggest "The Melancholy of Resistance" by Laszlo Krasznahorkai? His prose is dark and hypnotic. His sentences seem endless. His characters vacillate between hope and despair but rarely make the leap to either extreme. It's a work of half-apocalypse and incomprehensible revelation that even his characters often fail to grasp. It's a hyper-reality placed beside the surreal; it's madness next to reason... It's brilliant.
Or Péter Nádas' "Parallel Stories." I just finished it. I haven't had the chance to let it sink fully in quite yet. But it might just be one of the best books I've read.
Where I've been so far...
Ireland
1. The Butcher Boy (Patrick McCabe)
2. The Book of Evidence (John Banville)
3. The Trusting and the Maimed and Other Stories (James Plunkett)
4. Mercier et Camier (Samuel Beckett)
Scotland
5. The Ballad of Peckham Rye (Muriel Spark)
6. The Wasp Factory (Iain Banks)
7. How Late It Was, How Late (James Kelman)
England
8. In the Springtime of the Year (Susan Hill)
9. Where Angels Fear to Tread (E. M. Forster)
10. The Accidental Woman (Jonathan Coe)
11. David Copperfield (Charles Dickens)
12. Murder Must Advertise (Dorothy L. Sayers)
13. Regeneration (Pat Barker)
14. Black Dogs (Ian McEwan)
15. The Third Man and The Fallen Idol (Graham Greene)
France
16. Journal d'un corps (Daniel Pennac)
Germany
17. Perfume (Patrick Süskind)
18. The Emigrants (W. G. Sebald)
Italy
19. The Leopard (Giusseppe di Lampedusa)
Albania
20. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost (Ismail Kadare)
Turkey
21. My Name is Red (Orhan Pamuk)
India
22. The Home and the World (Rabindranath Tagore)
Australia
23. Oscar and Lucinda (Peter Carey)
New Zealand
24. Bliss and Other Stories (Katherine Mansfield)
Argentina
25. L'Année ou le Lion s'est échappé (Carlos Sampayo)
Peru
26. The Green House (Mario Vargas Llosa)
USA
27. Cannery Row (John Steinbeck)
28. Farewell, My Lovely (Raymond Chandler)
29. Lullaby (Chuck Palahniuk)
30. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)
31. Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut)
32. Franny and Zooey (J. D. Salinger)
33. The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
Canada
34. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
35. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
South Africa
36. Cry, the Beloved Country (Alan Paton)
37. Selected Stories (Nadine Gordimer)
Zimbabwe
38. Nervous Conditions (Tsitsi Dangarembga)
Portugal
39. All the Names (Jose Saramago)
Spain
40. Un Coeur si Blanc (Javier Marias)
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Currently reading: LA PLACE DE L'ETOILE (Patrick Modiano)
bouquin: One book per country for this challenge though, so that'd make 19 countries for you so far. (:
So is the reading challenge around the world in 80 countries or around the world in 80 books (as indicated in the thread title)?
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Currently reading: If This is a Man (Primo Levi)
My original intention was to challenge myself to read one book per country, so it would be 80 books from 80 different countries.Quote:
Originally Posted by bouquin
Quote:
Originally Posted by thelastmelon
In my case, I prefer a different travel plan - more in keeping with Phileas Fogg's who went around the world in 80 days but did not actually journey to 80 countries.
14. New Zeland - The Bone People by Keri HulmeQuote:
Japan - Kafka On the Shore by Haruki Murakami
2. Russia - Demons by Dostoevsky
3. France - The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Dumas
4. England - Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
5. India - Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
6. Sweden - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
7. Canada - World of Wonders by Robertson Davies
8. Turkey - My Name Is Red by Orhand Pamuk
9. Norway - The Wife by Sigrid Undset
10. Portugal - Blindness by Jose Saramago
11. Germany - Faust by Goethe
12. Spain - The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
13. Mexico - Rasero by Francisco Rebolledo
15. Iran - My Uncle Napoleon by Iraj PezeshkzadQuote:
1.Japan - Kafka On the Shore by Haruki Murakami
2. Russia - Demons by Dostoevsky
3. France - The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Dumas
4. England - Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
5. India - Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
6. Sweden - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
7. Canada - World of Wonders by Robertson Davies
8. Turkey - My Name Is Red by Orhand Pamuk
9. Norway - The Wife by Sigrid Undset
10. Portugal - Blindness by Jose Saramago
11. Germany - Faust by Goethe
12. Spain - The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
13. Mexico - Rasero by Francisco Rebolledo
14. New Zeland - The Bone People by Keri Hulme
Not to discourage you or anything, Dark Muse (in fact I cheer you on enthusiastically for undertaking this), but the two books on this list, which just so happen to be the only two books I have read (Dostoevsky's Demons and Johann Goethe's Faust) are intricate behemoths to tackle. Chipping away at Demons alone will take 2 months for a seasoned Classical reader, which I am certain you are. It took me more than 7 months. Faust is a completely different kind of monster but equally daunting. Oddly, it took me longer to read Faust than Don Quixote, and yet the latter is nearly twice the size. I wish you the best in your pursuit, though! :) I'm sure Fogg wouldn't give up ;)
Edittt: Oh crap, I just re-read the topic title and I realized you don't want time limits. That's a relief! You have my full support either way and I would be happy to undergo doing the challenge with you. It would be so much fun to discuss a book while reading it with a fellow LitNetter!
Hehe thank you, and in fact those are the books I have already read, so I have them well under my belt already.Quote:
Originally Posted by Adolescent09
Wow!! Very impressive, Dark Muse; Kudos to you! :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Dark Muse
When it comes to Poland I recommend Wisława Szymborska, Czesław Miłosz, Stanisław Lem.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark Muse
Question, Dark Muse -
What translation of Faust did you use, and what did you think of it? I'm getting to Faust on my own reading list as well, and it sounds like a work which is very difficult to translate. If you could recommend or disqualify a specific translation for me it would be helpful. Thanks!