Monday, 25 March 2013

Best European Literature

I have seen quite a few lists about North American literature but not many about European ones. So, I searched the web and found this list at Goodreads. Quite a few that I've read, others that are still on my wishlist, some that I probably won't read, ever. But still, a good list to choose from if you are looking for European literature.

Best books written by European Authors
1     Orwell, George "Nineteen Eighty Four" - 1949
2     Austen, Jane "Pride & Prejudice" - 1813
3     Saint-Exupéry, Antoine "The Little Prince" (French:. Le Petit Prince)
4     Hugo, Victor "Les Misérables" (French: Les Misérables) - 1862
5     Shakespeare, William "Hamlet" - 1603
6     Brontë, Charlotte "Jane Eyre" - 1847
7     Tolkien, J.R.R. "The Lord of the Rings" - 1954
8     Shakespeare, William "Macbeth" - 1606
9     Homer "Odyssey" (Greek: Ομήρου Οδύσσεια, Odýsseia) - 800-600 BC
10   Alighieri, Dante "The Divine Comedy" (Italian: Divina Commedia) - 1321
11   Cervantes, Miguel de "Don Quixote" (Spanish: El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha) - 1605/1615
12    Orwell, George "Animal Farm" - 1945
13    Kundera, Milan "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (Czech: Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) - 1984
14     Huxley, Aldous "Brave New World" - 1931
15     Carroll, Lewis "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" - 1865/71
16     Tolstoy, Leo "Anna Karenina" (Russian: Анна Каренина/Anna Karenina) - 1877
17     Dumas, Alexandre "The Count of Monte Cristo" (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) - 1845
18     Süskind, Patrick "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" (German: Das Parfum) - 1985
19     Eco, Umberto "The Name of the Rose" (Italian: Il nome della rosa) - 1980
20     Shelley, Mary "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus" - 1818
21     Shakespeare, William "A Midsummer Night's Dream" - 1596
22     Mann, Thomas "The Magic Mountain " (German: Der Zauberberg) - 1924
23     Dostoevsky, Fyodor "Crime and Punishment" (Russian: Преступление и наказание/ Prestupleniye i nakazaniye) - 1866
24     Kafka, Franz "The Metamorphosis" (German: Die Verwandlung) - 1912
25     Wilde, Oscar "The Picture of Dorian Gray" - 1890
26     Chaucer, Geoffrey "The Canterbury Tales" - 14th century
26     Molière "Tartuffe or the Imposter" (French: Tartuffe ou L'Imposteur) - 1682
28     Wilde, Oscar "The Importance of Being Earnest" - 1895
29     Bulgakov, Mikhail "The Master and Margarita" (Russian: Ма́стер и Маргари́та) - 1940/67
30     Remarque, Erich Maria "All Quiet on the Western Front" (German: Im Westen nichts Neues) - 1929
31     Stoker, Bram "Dracula" - 1897
32     Conrad, Joseph "Heart of Darkness" - 1902
33     Sophocles "Oedipus Rex" (Greek: Οἰδίπους Τύραννος, Oidipous Tyrannos) - 429 BC
34     Voltaire "Candide, ou l'Optimisme" (Candide, or Optimism) - 1759
35     Homer "The Iliad" (Greek: Ιλιάδα) - 8th century BC
36     Sophocles "Antigone" (Greek: Ἀντιγόνη) - 441 BC
37     Defoe, Daniel "Robinson Crusoe" - 1719
37     Austen, Jane "Emma" - 1816
39     Shakespeare, William "Othello" - 1603
40     Turgenev, Ivan "Fathers and Sons" (Russian: Отцы и дети/Otcy i Deti) - 1862
41     Swift, Jonathan "Gulliver's Travels" - 1726
42     Ruiz Zafón, Carlos "The Shadow of the Wind" (Spanish: La sombra del viento) - 2001
43     Woolf, Virginia "Mrs. Dalloway" - 1925
44     Dickens, Charles "David Copperfield" - 1850
45     Shakespeare, William "The Complete Works" - 1616 
46     Joyce, James "Ulysses" - 1922
47     Hugo, Victor "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" (French: Notre-Dame de Paris) - 1831
48     Camus, Albert "The Stranger" (French: L’Etranger) – 1942
49     Flaubert, Gustave "Madame Bovary" (French: Madame Bovary) - 1857
50     Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von "Faust" (First Part) (German: Faust. Der Tragödie erster Teil) - 1808
51     Hardy, Thomas "Jude the Obscure" - 1895
52     Unknown "Beowulf: A New Verse Translation" - 8th to 11th century
53     Bradbury, Ray "Fahrenheit 451" - 1953
54     Proust, Marcel "Remembrance of Things: Volume I - Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove" (French: À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs) - 1919
55     Dickens, Charles "Great Expectations" - 1861
56     Machiavelli, Niccolò "The Prince" (Italian: Il Principe) - 1532
56     Tolstoy, Lew Nikolajewitsch (Толстой, Лев Николаевич) "War and Peace" (Russian: Война и мир = Woina i mir) – 1868/69
58     Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan) "A Room with a View" - 1908
59     Camus, Albert "The Plague" (French: La Peste) - 1947
60     Brontë, Emily "Wuthering Heights" - 1847
61     Hašek, Jaroslav "The Good Soldier Svejk: His Fortunes in the World War" (Czech: Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války) - 1923
63     Dickens, Charles "Bleak House" - 1853
64     Eliot, T.S. "The Complete Poems and Plays" - 1965
65     White, T.H. "The Once and Future King" - 1958
66     Golding, William "Lord of the Flies" - 1954
67     Hodgson Burnett, Frances "The Secret Garden" - 1909
68     Stendhal "The Red and the Black" (French: Le Rouge et le Noir, intégral) - 1830
69     Dickens, Charles "A Tale of Two Cities" - 1859
70    
Shakespeare, William "The Tempest" - 1611
71     Zola, Émile "Germinal (French: Les Rougon-Macquart, #13) - 1885
72     Camus, Albert "The Fall" (French: La Chute) - 1956
73     Dickens, Charles "A Christmas Carol" - 1843
74     Rostand, Edmond "Cyrano De Bergerac" (French: Cyrano de Bergerac) - 1897
75     Wiesel, Elie "Night" (French: La Nuit) – 1958
76     Dickens, Charles "Oliver Twist" - 1837
77     Ibsen, Henrik "A Doll's House" (Norwegian: Et dukkehjem) - 1897
78     Kafka, Franz "The Trial" (German: Der Prozess) - 1914
79     Levi, Primo "If This Is a Man/The Truce" (Italian: Se questo è un uomo/La Tregua) - 1947/63
80    
Shakespeare, William "King Lear" - 1608
81     Beckett, Samuel "Waiting for Godot" - 1953
82     Dumas, Alexandre "The Three Musketeers" (French: Les Trois Mousquetaires) - 1844
83     Le Clézio, Jean-Marie Gustave "The Prospector" (French: Le Chercheur d'or) - 1985
84     Calvino, Italo "Invisible Cities" (Italian: Le città invisibili) - 1972
85     Proust, Marcel "Swann's Way" (In Search Lost Time, #1) (French: À la recherche du temps perdu) - 1913-27
86     Stoppard, Tom "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" - 1966
87     Waugh, Evelyn "Brideshead Revisited" - 1945
88     Choderlos de Laclos, Pierre "The Dangerous Liaisons" (French: Les Liaisons Dangereuses) - 1782
89     Larsson, Stieg "The Girl Who Played with Fire" (Millennium, #2) (Swedish: Flickan som lekte med elden) - 2006
90     Herodotus "The Histories" (Greek) - 440BC
91     Larsson, Stieg "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (Millennium, #1) (Swedish: Män som hatar kvinnor) - 2005
92     Calvino, Italo "The Baron in the Trees" (Italian: Il Barone Rampante) - 1957
93     Larsson, Stieg "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" (Millennium, #3) (Swedish: Luftslottet som sprängde) - 2007
94     Burgess, Anthony "A Clockwork Orange" - 1962
95     Pamuk, Orhan "My Name is Red" (Turkish: Benim Adım Kırmızı) – 1998
96     Christie, Agatha "And Then There Were None" - 1939
97     Yeats, W.B. "The Collected Poems" - 1939
98     de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Charles-Louis "The Persian Letters" (French: Lettres persanes) - 1721
99     Unknown "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" - 14th century
100  
Shakespeare, William "Henry V" - 1599

56 so far. Still more English language novels and plays than any others - but it's a start.

2 comments:

  1. I can't resist a list! I'll spend some time with this one.

    I came by to find your European Reading Challenge post but can't find it. I saw that you signed up for the challenge, but can you please direct me to your sign up post? Welcome!

    Rose City Reader

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  2. Haha, Gilion, neither can I, you've obviously come to the right place. ;-)
    Anyway, yes, I did sign up for the challenge but haven't posted about it, yet. First, I was thinking to create my own "favourite European novels" list but I think I will start just with one about the challenge. I'll post the link as soon as I wrote the entry. As I said, I've already read 25 European novels this year, so it takes a tad longer ... Still, thanks for reminding me.
    I love your blog, I'm looking forward to a vivid exchange.

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