For me it’s gotta be “Morte e Vida Severina”/ “Severino Death and Life”. It’s an epic poem narrating the journey of a poor man from Northeastern Brazil, a famously poor and segregated region that’s frequently affected by severe droughts, fleeing from his home and walking to the big city to survive the season. On the way he describes all the misery he experiences and sees.
One stanza that has stuck with me for years goes something like this "And all of us Severinos/With the same lives/Will die of the same/Severe Severino death,/The death died of/Old age before thirty/Of an ambush before twenty/And of hunger day by day/(Of weakness and plague/The Severino death/attacks at all ages/even those not born)
“Olvidado Rey Gudú” by Spanish writer Ana María Matute. It translates as “Forgotten King Gudu” and it’s the author’s most ambitious book. It’s a family saga set in a fantasy location where magic starts becoming more and more important, characters love and hate and live, and the root of everything is at childhood. Think One Hundred Years of Solitude meets European fairy tales.