Member: athens

Hi Athens - nice to see you here. I live on Crete despit being London born and bred. I wonder if I might presume upon you? I recently posted a bit of a literary quiz over at my blog - http://poundemonium.blogspot.com/2007/05... - and we've been working through the authors and titles for a while now. Might I ask you - as a Greek native and a book fiend to give me the definitive list? Here's what we've got so far:

1 Umberto Eco - Name of the Rose
2 Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
3 Isabel Allende - Paula
4 Herman Hesse - Demian
5 Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse
6 Ernest Hemmingway - The Old Man and the Sea
7 Gabriel Garcia Marquez - The Autumn of the Patriarch
8 Jack Kerouac - On the Road
9 John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
10 Franz Kafka - The Trial
11 Ian McEwan - Black Dogs
12 Jorge Louis Borges - Ficciones
13 Luis Sepulveda - Diary of a Sentimental Killer?
14 Nadine Gordimer - The House Gun
15 Joseph Conrad - The Shadow Line
16 D H Lawrence - Sons and Lovers
17 William Golding - Lord of the Flies
18 Jose Saramago - All the Names
19 William Faulkner - The Sound and The Fury
20 Gunther Grass - Tin Drum
21 Thomas Mann - Death in Venice
22 Arthur Schnitzler - Dream Story

posted by papalaz at 11:03 am (EST) on Jun 2, 2007

An interesting overlap in taste. :)

posted by stancarey at 12:10 pm (EST) on Apr 12, 2007

Thanks for your message and your recommendation. His works are not available in the library so I'll check out the bookshops. As for A Writer at War, I'm sure you'll enjoy it. I can see why you think that Panos Karnezis gives a distorted view of Greece. I'm the first one to pull my hair out when I hear or see stories about the arrogant but elegant French or the plucky Irish. Grrr. It will be interesting to see what his next novels will be like.

Nothing to do with the above but have you read anything by Christopher Hope? I'm reading his latest, My Mother's Lovers and it is quite good, so here's another recommendation. I really liked one of his previous works, Heaven Forbid.

As for the differences between Dublin and Paris, well, in a way the good thing is that now, when I'm in Paris, it's all pleasure and no work. Trouble is I don't get home as much as I would like, and I keep hearing about all these great things happening over there (radio on the internet is a very good thing!). Dublin still has (despite what Dubliners think!) a provincial feel to it I think. It has changed a lot though and there's quite a bit to do around town.

Enjoy your day

posted by nathb at 5:49 am (EST) on Feb 26, 2007

Me again. I just realised that I was only thinking of contemporary writers but my favourite Irish writer is Flann O'Brien. You should check him out.

posted by nathb at 5:13 am (EST) on Feb 21, 2007

Thanks for your message. Sorry I didn't reply sooner. I will definitely check out Erofeyev and I agree with you on Life and Fate, an amazing novel. I don't know if you have heard of A Writer at War, which is based on Grossman's notebooks. It is edited and translated by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova and published by Harvill Press.

As for Irish writers, well I guess you would have the usual suspects like John Banville, Colm Toibin, Roddy Doyle (I see you have some of their works already), Pat McCabe, John McGahern, William Trevor, etc.. One writer I particularly like is Mary Morrissey. She has a couple of novels out and I would recommend The Pretender. I also quite like Ronan Bennett.

I must admit that the only contemporary Greek writer I have read is Panos Karnezis. Anyone you would recommend?

As for sitting in a cafe in Paris, that's where I'm from and I could not agree with you more...

posted by nathb at 5:10 am (EST) on Feb 21, 2007