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