At the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Sun 7 Oct 2018 Sebastian Faulks hosted a panel of European Literature Specialists.
A reminder of the Reading Europe event:
In these fraught times with so much talk around borders, walls and divisions, it feels more important than ever to be thinking and reading widely. In what may well be our last Festival still in the EU, Guest Curator Sebastian Faulks assembles a crack team of translators, writers and publishers committed to getting us to read beyond our borders: novelist and Man Booker International judge Elif Shafak, acclaimed translator Daniel Hahn, European literature specialist Rosie Goldsmith and publisher Christopher MacLehose, who is responsible for introducing authors as diverse as Haruki Murakami, Javier Marías, Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson to British readers.
At the end of this wonderful session, Sebastian asked all of us on the panel to recommend some favourite books, contemporary or classic. Here at the European Literature Network we are delighted to publish the panel’s list of Recommended Riveting Reads.
We’d like to dedicate this list to the late, very great translator Anthea Bell, who died this month. ANYTHING she translated, from Kafka to Freud to Julia Franck, makes for a Riveting Read, but you must start with her translations of ASTERIX – all 30 books. When you’ve finished those (!), here’s our list:
THE UNSEEN (Norway)
by Roy Jacobsen
Tr. Don Bartlett
THE RETURN (Portugal)
by Dulce Maria Cardosa
Tr. Angel Gurria-Quintana
THE YEAR OF THE DEATH OF RICARDO REIS (Portugal)
by Jose Saramago
Tr. Giovanni Pontiero
VISITATION (German)
by Jenny Erpenbeck
Tr. Susan Bernofsky
THE RINGS OF SATURN (Germany)
by W.G. Sebald
Tr. by Michael Hulse
SUN ALLEY (Romania)
by Cecilia Stefanescu
Tr. Alexandar Coliban and Andreea Hofer
LAND OF GREEN PLUMS (Romania/Germany)
by Herta Muller
Tr. Michael Hofmann
MEMOIRS OF A POLAR BEAR (Germany/Japan)
by Yoko Tawada
Tr. Susan Bernofsky
TO THE BACK OF BEYOND (Switzerland)
by Peter Stamm
Tr. Michael Hofmann
THE TRAITORS HEAD (Albania)
by Ismail Kadare
Tr. John Hodgson
THE PALACE OF DREAMS (Albania)
by Ismail Kadare
Tr. Barbara Bray, from the French of Jusuf Vrioni
BELLADONNA (Croatia)
by Daša Drndic
Tr. Celia Hawkesworth
FLIGHTS (Poland)
by Olga Tokarczuk
Tr. Jennifer Croft
SWALLOWING MERCURY (Poland)
by Wioletta Greg
Tr. Eliza Marciniak
LIFE AND FATE (Ukraine/Russia)
by Vasily Grossman
Tr. Robert Chandler
Author: Alexander Solzhenistyn (Russia)
Various but above all ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH
Tr. Harry Willetts
Author: Boris Akunin (Russia)
Various: The Erast Fandorin series of crime novels set in 19th century St. Petersburg
Tr. Andrew Bromfield
THE JOURNAL OF HELENE BERR (France)
by Hélène Berr (written in English; “The French Anne Frank”)
W, OR THE MEMORY OF CHILDHOOD (France)
by Georges Perec
Tr. David Bellos
A DARK STRANGER (France)
by Julien Gracq
Tr. Christopher Moncrieff
THE OPPOSING SHORE (France)
by Julien Gracq
Tr. by Richard Howard
BRODECK’S REPORT (France)
by Philippe Claudel
Tr. by John Cullen
KARATE CHOP (Denmark)
by Dorthe Nors
Tr. Martin Aitken
THE HISTORY OF DANISH DREAMS (Denmark)
by Peter Høeg
Tr. by Barbara Haveland
ANATOMY OF A MOMENT (Spain)
by Javier Cercas
Tr. Anne McLean
WAR AND TURPENTINE (Belgium)
by Stefan Hertmans
Tr. David McKay
THE TWIN (Netherlands)
by Gerbrand Bakker
Tr. David Colmer
THE FOLLOWING STORY (Netherlands)
By Cees Nooteboom
Tr. Ina Rilke
ISTANBUL, ISTANBUL (Turkey)
by Burhan Sönmez
Tr. Ümit Hussein
SEHER (“DAWN”) (Turkey)
by Selahattin Demirtas
Short stories – not yet translated into English. Read more here.
LIKE A SWORD WOUND (Turkey)
by Ahmet Altan
Tr. Brendan Freely, Yelda Türedi
A HEART SO WHITE (Spain)
by Javier Marias
Tr. Margaret Jull Costa
THE DAY OF JUDGMENT (Italy/Sardinia)
by Salvatore Satta
Tr. Patrick Creagh
HISTORY, a novel (Italy)
by Elsa Morante
Tr. William Weaver
INDEPENDENT PEOPLE (Iceland)
by Halldór Laxness
Tr. J.A. Thompson
THE DOOR (Hungary)
by Magda Szabó
Tr. by Len Rix