Foreign fiction, 1940–2000
The gimmick of this website is that I compile my lists from other lists and various list-like materials (such as recommendation threads on message boards), which lends the whole undertaking a veneer of objectivity and neutrality. Of course, this is all a ruse. While I refrain from massaging the numbers or manually adding arbitrary items just because I feel like it, I do use discretion when selecting my sources. Thus, each list reflects my very specific biases, and my work on it should not be mistaken for legitimate statistical research.
The following list is quite possibly the most biased one I have posted here so far. It does deliver on the promise expressed in its title: it includes books originally written in languages other than English that were published between 1940 and 2000. However, my criterion for choosing the sources from which it was built was whether they included the names and titles I would personally like to see on such a list. The result is still not a list of my own recommendations, but at least large parts of it heavily skew toward my own tastes and preferences.
In my opinion, it’s all for the best (but of course I would say that). While my central aim was to remedy the surprising and frankly depressing dearth of consolidated information about international literature on the English-speaking web, I also wanted to avoid producing another bland, generic “great books” ranking. I wanted to make a list of books that I find interesting; generally speaking, this means books that are thematically or formally challenging, inventive and original, and preferably incorporating elements of the weird and the fantastic.
Still, I ultimately deferred to the choices made by the people responsible for the sources that I consulted. One proof of my strict policy of not tinkering with the rankings is the astonishingly high position of books by Haruki Murakami, which I find slightly inappropriate considering the standing of the authors immediately succeeding him on the list. This can be easily explained, however: the rankings are to a large extent a measure of popularity on the current web, and Murakami is one of the most prominent and accessible “major” foreign writers included in this set. In my personal version of this list, I would also omit several titles that, in my estimation, many people feel compelled to put on their best-of lists purely because of the moral or political significance commonly ascribed to them rather than any actual aesthetic or intellectual pleasure they deliver. This is not to say I’m not satisfied with the list in its current shape; all in all, I consider it biased in just the right way.
Ficciones
by Jorge Luis Borges
5 figs out of 5
The Aleph and Other Stories
by Jorge Luis Borges
5 figs out of 5
If on a winter's night a traveler
by Italo Calvino
4.5 figs out of 5
“Trilogy” (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)
by Samuel Beckett
4.5 figs out of 5
Hopscotch
by Julio Cortázar
4.5 figs out of 5
Blow-Up and Other Stories
by Julio Cortázar
4.5 figs out of 5
Correction
by Thomas Bernhard
4 figs out of 5
Extinction
by Thomas Bernhard
4 figs out of 5
The Woman in the Dunes
by Kobo Abe
4 figs out of 5
The Box Man
by Kobo Abe
4 figs out of 5
Jealousy
by Alain Robbe-Grillet
4 figs out of 5
In the Labyrinth
by Alain Robbe-Grillet
4 figs out of 5
The Melancholy of Resistance
by László Krasznahorkai
4 figs out of 5
The Tartar Steppe
by Dino Buzzati
3.5 figs out of 5
Catastrophe and Other Stories
by Dino Buzzati
3.5 figs out of 5
Malpertuis
by Jean Ray
3.5 figs out of 5
Life: A User's Manual
by Georges Perec
3.5 figs out of 5
Terra Nostra
by Carlos Fuentes
3.5 figs out of 5
The Death of Artemio Cruz
by Carlos Fuentes
3.5 figs out of 5
The Rings of Saturn
by W.G. Sebald
3.5 figs out of 5
Pedro Páramo
by Juan Rulfo
3.5 figs out of 5
The Invention of Morel
by Adolfo Bioy Casares
3.5 figs out of 5
The Tin Drum
by Günter Grass
3 figs out of 5
The Physicists
by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
3 figs out of 5
The Visit
by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
3 figs out of 5
The Tenant
by Roland Topor
3 figs out of 5
Conversation in the Cathedral
by Mario Vargas Llosa
3 figs out of 5
The War of the End of the World
by Mario Vargas Llosa
3 figs out of 5
No Exit
by Jean-Paul Sartre
3 figs out of 5
An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter
by César Aira
3 figs out of 5
Ghosts
by César Aira
3 figs out of 5
Triptych
by Claude Simon
3 figs out of 5
The Flanders Road
by Claude Simon
3 figs out of 5
Our Lady of the Flowers
by Jean Genet
3 figs out of 5
The Opposing Shore
by Julien Gracq
3 figs out of 5
Changing Track
by Michel Butor
3 figs out of 5
Passing Time
by Michel Butor
3 figs out of 5
In the Miso Soup
by Ryu Murakami
3 figs out of 5
Doctor Faustus
by Thomas Mann
3 figs out of 5
The Elementary Particles (Atomised)
by Michel Houellebecq
3 figs out of 5
The House of Oracles and Other Stories
by Thomas Owen
3 figs out of 5
Foam of the Daze
by Boris Vian
3 figs out of 5
The Kingdom of this World
by Alejo Carpentier
3 figs out of 5
The Tunnel
by Ernesto Sabato
3 figs out of 5
On Heroes and Tombs
by Ernesto Sabato
3 figs out of 5
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2.5 figs out of 5
Rhinoceros
by Eugène Ionesco
2.5 figs out of 5
Zazie in the Metro
by Raymond Queneau
2.5 figs out of 5
Exercises in Style
by Raymond Queneau
2.5 figs out of 5
The Piano Teacher
by Elfriede Jelinek
2.5 figs out of 5
A Heart So White
by Javier Marías
2.5 figs out of 5
Tainaron: Mail from Another City
by Leena Krohn
2.5 figs out of 5
Your Face Tomorrow
by Javier Marías
2.5 figs out of 5
The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
by Peter Handke
2.5 figs out of 5
Repetition
by Peter Handke
2.5 figs out of 5
The Obscene Bird of Night
by José Donoso
2.5 figs out of 5
Fado Alexandrino
by António Lobo Antunes
2.5 figs out of 5
Portrait of a Man Unknown
by Nathalie Sarraute
2.5 figs out of 5
Between Life and Death
by Nathalie Sarraute
2.5 figs out of 5
Spells
by Michel de Ghelderode
2.5 figs out of 5
The Egghead Republic
by Arno Schmidt
2.5 figs out of 5
Nobodaddy's Children
by Arno Schmidt
2.5 figs out of 5
Dictionary of the Khazars
by Milorad Pavić
2.5 figs out of 5
H
by Philippe Sollers
2.5 figs out of 5
The Ship
by Hans Henny Jahnn
2.5 figs out of 5
The Night of Lead
by Hans Henny Jahnn
2.5 figs out of 5
The General of the Dead Army
by Ismail Kadare
2.5 figs out of 5
The Palace of Dreams
by Ismail Kadare
2.5 figs out of 5
Thomas the Obscure
by Maurice Blanchot
2.5 figs out of 5
Death Sentence
by Maurice Blanchot
2.5 figs out of 5
Fable
by Robert Pinget
2.5 figs out of 5
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
by João Guimarães Rosa
2.5 figs out of 5
The Experience of the Night
by Marcel Béalu
2.5 figs out of 5
The Impersonal Adventure
by Marcel Béalu
2.5 figs out of 5
Blinding
by Mircea Cărtărescu
2.5 figs out of 5
I Served the King of England
by Bohumil Hrabal
2.5 figs out of 5
Too Loud a Solitude
by Bohumil Hrabal
2.5 figs out of 5
Memoirs of Hadrian
by Marguerite Yourcenar
2.5 figs out of 5
The Margin
by André Pieyre de Mandiargues
2.5 figs out of 5
Thus Were Their Faces
by Silvina Ocampo
2.5 figs out of 5
Cosmos
by Witold Gombrowicz
2.5 figs out of 5
Pornografia
by Witold Gombrowicz
2.5 figs out of 5
Waystations of the Deep Night
by Marcel Brion
2.5 figs out of 5
The Notebook Trilogy
by Ágota Kristóf
2.5 figs out of 5
Homo Zapiens (Babylon)
by Victor Pelevin
2.5 figs out of 5
The Death of Virgil
by Hermann Broch
2.5 figs out of 5
The Twenty Days of Turin
by Giorgio de Maria
2.5 figs out of 5
The Neverending Story
by Michael Ende
2.5 figs out of 5
The Greater Hope
by Ilse Aichinger
2.5 figs out of 5
Bad Words: Selected Short Prose
by Ilse Aichinger
2.5 figs out of 5
Count Julian
by Juan Goytisolo
2.5 figs out of 5
Three Trapped Tigers
by Guillermo Cabrera Infante
2.5 figs out of 5
Cassandra
by Christa Wolf
2.5 figs out of 5
The Quest for Christa T.
by Christa Wolf
2.5 figs out of 5
Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories
by Isaac Bashevis Singer
2.5 figs out of 5
The Discovery of Heaven
by Harry Mulisch
2 figs out of 5
The Encyclopedia of the Dead
by Danilo Kiš
2 figs out of 5
Contempt
by Alberto Moravia
2 figs out of 5
Boredom
by Alberto Moravia
2 figs out of 5
The Bridge on the Drina
by Ivo Andrić
2 figs out of 5
Anniversaries
by Uwe Johnson
2 figs out of 5
Speculations About Jakob
by Uwe Johnson
2 figs out of 5
The Leopard
by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
2 figs out of 5
Malina
by Ingeborg Bachmann
2 figs out of 5
The Other Side of the Mountain
by Michel Bernanos
2 figs out of 5
Friday, or, The Other Island
by Michel Tournier
2 figs out of 5
The Ogre (The Erl-King)
by Michel Tournier
2 figs out of 5
Gogol's Wife and Other Stories
by Tommaso Landolfi
2 figs out of 5
Bonjour Tristesse
by Françoise Sagan
2 figs out of 5
Sexualis '95
by Jacques Sternberg
2 figs out of 5
If This Is a Man
by Primo Levi
2 figs out of 5
The Aesthetics of Resistance
by Peter Weiss
2 figs out of 5
Marat/Sade
by Peter Weiss
2 figs out of 5
The Accursed
by Claude Seignolle
2 figs out of 5
Paradiso
by José Lezama Lima
2 figs out of 5
The Nightcharmer and Other Tales
by Claude Seignolle
2 figs out of 5
Mr. President
by Miguel Ángel Asturias
2 figs out of 5
The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum
by Heinrich Böll
2 figs out of 5
The Interrogation
by J.M.G. Le Clézio
2 figs out of 5