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

    ReplyDelete
  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.

    ReplyDelete