What about Snorri Sturluson?Originally Posted by Helga
What about Snorri Sturluson?
I'm American, proud of it too. We have Stephen King and Orson Scott Card, two of my personal favorites.
Though, I love reading literature written by authors from different cultures and countries, interesting indeed.
I liked Card a little too until I started reading his non-fiction which is jingoist homophobia if I've ever seen it.
I hear the politics make there way into some of his other books (I only read Ender's Game), which I guess is unfortunate, since in terms of craft he has some talent.
Card's a devout Mormon and it makes its way into a lot of his work, it is a bit unfortunate at times. Ender's Game is a great work of children's literature though.
Edit: This review is worth a read to see just how far Card's work has fallen,
http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2011summer/card.shtml
Last edited by OrphanPip; 01-06-2012 at 02:38 AM.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
I'm from Belgium and we don't have to brag too much... but Charles de Coster is one (Uylenspieghel), Willem who wrote Reynaert, Maurice Maeterlinck won the Nobel Prize for Lit for us and then there are Hendrik Conscience, Johan Daisne (one of the few magical realists), Willem Elsshot
I think that's about it apart from a few peasants' stories and mass 19th century bourgeois writings everyone has forgotten about...
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
I'm Australian - perhaps Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One), Thomas Keneally (Schindler's Ark), Peter Carey (Oscar and Lucinda)? I can't really think of any others!
David Malouf is my favourite Australian author, though.
You forgot to mention Georges Simenon who wrote getting on for 200 novels and also claimed to have slept with 10,000 women. Where on earth did he get the time for those novels?
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
I'm British, so there's a lot of scope. However, Hilary Mantel most excellent writer of Wolf Hall, grew up in my town, and I went to school with Steven Hall who wrote The Raw Shark Texts and sometime writer of Dr. Who. Am I jealous of his success and talent...no of course not!
Want to know what I think about books? Check out https://biisbooks.wordpress.com/
Hi. I'm new. I'm Bulgarian. I don't really like Bulgarian novels so much but we have some good poets. Most of them died young.
Here - the last poem of Nikola Vaptzarov.
The fight is hard and pitiless.
The fight is epic, as they say.
I fell. Another takes my place –
Why single out a name?
After the firing squad – the worms.
Thus does the simple logic go.
But in the storm, we’ll be with you,
My people, for we loved you so.
wow, thats quite a beautifull poem, thanks for introducing me to this poet. What do you think would be the best english translation of his works?
I am Swede and the greatest author here is probably August Strindberg, but global maybe Stieg Larsson now days.
Last edited by Gregory Samsa; 01-06-2012 at 05:53 PM.
There is hope, but not for us.
I'll add three I recently read; Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Faulkner (American)
.
Unfortunately, most of Bulgarian poets don't have good translations in English -not to mention whole books. Here I can offer another one from Vaptzarov. He was a communist in times when communism was not a dirty word.
History
History, will you mention us
In your faded scroll?
We worked in factories, offices –
Our names were not well known.
We worked in fields, smelled strongly
Of onion and sour bread.
Through thick moustaches angrily
We cursed the life we led.
Will you at least be grateful
We fattened you with news
And slaked your thirst so richly
With the blood of slaughtered crowds?
You’ll lose the human focus
To view the panorama,
And no one will remember
The simple human drama.
The poets will be distracted
With pamphlets, progress rates;
Our unrecorded suffering
Will roam alone in space.
Was it a life worth noting,
A life worth digging up?
Unearthed, it reeks of poison,
Tastes bitter in the cup.
We were born along the hedgerows,
In the shelter of stray thorns
Our mothers lay perspiring,
Their dry lips tightly drawn.
We died like flies in autumn.
The women mourned the dead,
Turned their lament to singing –
But only the wild grass heard.
We who survived our brothers,
Sweated from every pore,
Took any job that offered,
Toiled as the oxen do.
At home our fathers taught us:
‘So shall it always be.’
But we scowled back and spat on
Their fool’s philosophy.
We quit the table curtly,
Ran out of doors, and there
In the open felt the stirring
Of something bright and fair.
How anxiously we waited
In crowded-out cafés,
And turned in late at night
With the last communiqués!
How we were soothed by hoping! ...
But leaden skies pressed lower,
The scorching wind hissed viciously ...
Till we could stand no more!
Yet in your endless volumes
Beneath each letter and line
Out pain will leer forbiddingly
And raise a bitter cry.
For life, showing no mercy,
With heavy brutish paw
Battered our hungry faces.
That’s why our tongue is raw.
That’s why the poems I’m writing
In hours I steal from sleep
Have not the grace of perfume,
But brief and scowling beat.
For the hardship and affliction
We do not seek rewards,
Nor do we want our pictures
In the calendar of years.
Just tell our story simply
To those we shall not see,
Tell those who will replace us –
We fought courageously.
If I were a Persian/Iranian which I am not, Omar Khayam would be my top poet...and Mathematician, Astronomer and Philosopher too.
I am English-British. I guess the most obvious choice is Shakespeare. Among the arts this island has only really excelled in literature. In painting and music the continental Europeans have far more to boast about. There is Chaucer, Dickens, Shelley, Byron, Keats, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, D H Lawrence, John Milton, H G Wells, Dr Johnson, John Donne, Alexander Pope.
Two of my personal favourites are Evelyn Waugh and Philip Larkin
But there are plenty of non-English writers who mean a great deal to me: Herman Hesse, Kurt Vonnegut, Voltaire, Montaigne etc.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
