Fred Armentrout's suggestions for The Bigger Read list
EUROPEAN
From the Italian:
Levi, Carlo, Christ Stopped at Eboli
Levi, Primo, If Not Now, When?
Calvino, Italo, Invisible Cities
Calvino, Italo, Italian Folktales
Boccaccio, Giovanni, The Decameron
From the Portuguese:
de Camoes, Luiz, The Lusiads
From the French:
Camus, Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus
de Balzac, Honore, Droll Stories
de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America
de Crevecoeur, J. Hector St. John, Letters From An American Farmer
de Montaigne, Michel, Essays
Sijie, Dai, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
From the Czech:
Hasek, Jaroslav, The Good Soldier Svejk
From the Norwegian:
Seierstad, Asne, The Bookseller of Kabul
From the Russian:
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, August 1914
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, Gulag Archipelago
Voznesensky, Andre, Antiworlds and the Fifth Ace
Aksyonov, Vassily, The Burn
From the German:
Hesse, Herman, Steppenwolf
Hesse, Herman, Siddhartha
Ludens, Homo, Johan Huizinga
Boll, Heinrich, Adam and the Train
From the Finnish:
The Kalevala
ASIAN
From the Chinese:
Mo Yan, The Garlic Ballads
The Book of Songs
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Yu Hsin, The Lament for the South
Lao She, Teahouse
Zhao Zhen Kai, Waves
Wu Ch’eng-en, Monkey
Han Shan, Encounters with Cold Mountain
Xi Xi (pen name of Zhang Yan), My City: A Hong Kong Story
From the Vietnamese:
Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War
From the Japanese:
Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
Kawabata, Yasunari, A Thousand Cranes
Kawabata, Yasunari, The Izu Dancer
Tanazaki, Junichiro, Some Prefer Nettles
From the Punjabi:
Pritam, Amrita, The Skeleton and other writings
From the Arabic:
Simsar, Muhammed A., Tales of a Parrot
