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)
“nummelan ponitalli” and “koiratytöt” my favorite childrens/young teen book series’s 🥰 i so wish that everyone could enjoy them as much as i did.
So im english but: The hatching magic series. A beautiful book series about dragons
Heinrich von Kleist. Anything by him. There are English translations of his work (my husband loves the short stories) but he has not been well known.
His stories and stage plays are cruel and bloody and very German.
Wym "very German“?
Germany as a nation state was only founded in 1871 (after a long lead-up), sixty years after Kleist’s death, but he lived in a time that is considered formative for the idea of a German identity.
Kleist and many of his contemporaries (Schiller, Goethe, the Grimms, Eichendorff, Hölderlin, etc.) make up the foundation of the German literary canon (for better and worse) - and have been used as sources for what that German identity is supposed to be ever since. People still call Germany the “Land der Dichter und Denker” (land of poets and thinkers) which is a phrase going back to Kleist’s time.
So, he’s “very German” in the sense that the idea of “German” didn’t really exist before the 19th century and he was part of the gestation of that identity. Kleist himself was very much a nationalist in a time when much of what would become Germany was under Napoleonic rule and wrote several patriotic poems, dramas and novellas. Unfortunately, the Nazis found it very easy to misuse them for their own purposes while downplaying their liberal and republican (both not in the modern/American sense) contents.
I recommend “Michael Kohlhaas” which was also one of Kafka’s favorites.
One of his plays was also the Birthday Play of Kaiser Wilhelm II - Prinz Friedrich von Homburg. This can be seen as a seed piece for German Nationalism in the early 19th century.
金庸 Jin Yun and all his series
More people read it than Lord of the rings probably
Basically the grand daddy of martial arts fantasy. It was so successful it killed the genre for like 30 years. Too bad it is very difficult to translate and do it justice into English.
I bought a translation of A Hero Born last time I was in Taiwan. Translator is Anna Holmwood. I’ll have to start it soon.
I should read this ! My Chinese is proficient enough that I got through 3 body problem but I’m not Chinese nor live in a Chinese community anymore and therefore really don’t know what to read unless something is big enough to make it into western media.
chinese web fiction sphere is popping. Idk if you’re into fantasy, but there’s a chinese web serial called lord of mysteries which weaves together eldritch deities, mysticism based paths to godhood, intricate conspiracies from literally 10s of different factions in a fantasy world… amazingly creative stuff, most interesting fantasy story I’ve read in years. Problem is the english translation is really crude/rough. Probably far easier to get into if you can read the original chinese. Don’t get me wrong fans of web ficiton will put up with crappy prose to get to the brilliance of the underlying world/story but you’ll probably have a better time in the original language.
Any recommendations for the best English translations?
Too bad it’s one hell of a self insert where all the women are written in a way to serve the authors own fantasy
Yeah. His novels are some of the most popular Chinese novels in modern Chinese literature and have left a very strong mark in Chinese culture and yet is virtually unknown outside of Chinese-speaking world. You probably find more westerners who have read translated versions of Three Body Problem (also a good book though) than Jin Yong stuff.
The issue with wuxia is just that I think they are very hard to translate, plus the stories are all deeply tied with Chinese history and culture. Even if you get past the problem of translating the literal meanings to English, there are other historical and cultural contexts that could be hard to translate across. It’s not like a sci-fi book like Three Body Problem where the fundamental concepts are much more interesting to a western reader.
One hundred years of solitude. It is a true master piece. The house of spirits
The Orlando Furioso and The Gerusalemme Liberata, beautiful fantastic poems from the XVI century.
Althought, many would even call them “woke” in some aspects, especially the Furioso.
Fun fact: Orlando Furioso was Giacomo Casanova’s (yeah, that Casanova) favorite book. Somehwat surprisingly for anyone not familiar with him, he was really well-read.
I always wanted to give it a read but haven’t been able to do so.
Because of all the warrior women?
The Furioso is genuinely one of the best things I’ve ever read in any language, from any time period. Should be better known than The Divine Comedy imo, its funny, sassy, heroic, smart as all hell. Just an incredible achievement all round
Orlando Furioso is absolutely wild, and Barbara Reynolds’ English translation of it is impeccable.
When you say ‘woke’, is it just the ‘city of ladies’ part you’re thinking of?
This is fake because I’m not Brazilian, but Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, by Jorge Amado. A masterpiece of good humor and understanding of people.
I love that book. Read it in English.
Jorge Amado was a master in everything, and his writing isn’t the only one. Such a national treasure.
OMG wasn’t he wonderful. One of my favorite, favorite, favorite books ever.
Le chevalier au bouclier vert. A cool story i’ve read in school about a random poor dude in the medieval era who saved the daugther of the Blois county, was made knight because of it and ended up marrying her.
Kongens fald by Johannes V. Jensen, although many of the reasons I love it are its beautiful language, so I’m not sure how well they’d translate to English.
The Tower Chronicles by Laura Gallego (also Memories of Idhun). Two high fantasy trilogies with more than decent worldbuilding.
Any thing by GA Kulkarni
Tschick. It’s about two boys on a road trip. It’s not my favorite, but it does deserve more recognition.
Definitely going with “Meu Pé de Laranja Lima”, also from Brasil. The rest of the world needs to be traumatized like I was at 11.
Grande Sertão: Veredas, de Guimarães Rosa.
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. I mean, I know there are translations of all of Mann’s works, but I don’t think he even remotely gets the attention he deserves. Such an incredible author.
He’s one of these authors that I keep going back to. The Magic Mountain is a whole world in itself.