We do not need to revisit any of the arguments from other threads. Is Europe the center of the literary world? Perhaps it is and perhaps it is not, but we beat it to death. Do women or minorities deserve a certain number of spots here? NO. Not on the basis of being women or minorities, only on the basis of merit. Are aesthetic criteria flawed? Yes. Are they ageist, sexist and no doubt other -ist? Yes. That discussion is raging on the Only the Brave May Enter Here thread.

Let's attempt to come up with a list that many can subscribe to, and if not, at least introduce good novels for us to read and enjoy, even if they do not make the list of ten.

Dostoevsky is forever! And Proust! And Murasaki Shikibu!

I think we should limit it to "not written in any Indo-European language," meself.

But! To keep it to the "literary":

Dostoevsky (for his whole oeuvre) and Tolstoy (for War and Peace) and Bulgakov. Mann and Grass and Goethe. Balzac and Flaubert and Dumas and Proust and Rabelais and Verne. Dante (I read him in prose trans.) and Calvino. Borges and Garcia Marquez and I must admit that I am really liking Clarice Lispector. Orhan Pamuk. Lady Murasaki, but also Natsume Soseki, Tanizaki Jun'ichiro,and much as I'd be an unpopular man in certain quarters for making this claim, I'd call Murakami Haruki one of the all-time greats. If we're counting Genji, what of Romance of the Three Kingdoms? I'd also make a case for Bao Ninh,although I'm not sure it wouldn't be based in part on orientalist frisson, and that concludes our world tour.

Wait! Finnegan's Wake.

Don Quixote, Les Miserables, Siddharta, The Master and Margarita.

Ficciones (not a novel, but whatever...)

Something by Calvino? Maybe Invisible Cities?

Three Kingdoms?

And though it'll probably be shot down - The Count of Monte Cristo.

ETA: Dang, Martin slipped in before me...

Message edited by its author, Nov 3, 2009, 3:35pm.

I'm not shooting at the Count, he's too canny a revenge taker! Besides, the Count has got more legs than, say, Siddharta, for sure. The problem is the French are especially prolific writers of great literature. I'm not sure you could get a list down to only ten if you include them!

Also, Mishima over Murakami.

Message edited by its author, Nov 3, 2009, 3:25pm.

I'd add Umberto Eco, Naguib Mahfouz, Georges Perec, Vasily Grossman, Jean Ginet,
Colette, Marquis de Sade, Marguerite Yourcenar, Sigrid Undset, Julio Cortazar, Carlos Fuentes, Kafka, Choderlos de Laclos, Tsao Hsueh-Chin, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and I would bet, thought I've yet read him, just based on his present popularity that I think is more than a fad, Roberto Bolano.

Now as for which books of these writers? Sheesh. Give me a few days to scratch my head.

I'm pro-Count, even though I've only read just half of it, and I love the one book by Haruki Murakami I've read, I'll second that just based on The Wind Up Bird Chronicle.

What about Kobo Abe? Haven't read him, though he's mentioned a lot on these types of things.

Or what about an Arnost Lustig? Too obscure to make it?

booksfallapart > I think I just got a literary crush on you from that post alone. I am now on my way to wishlist half of your library.

Ha ha ha Torikton, I may have beat you to the punch on the Count, but you didn't sit scratching you head in puzzlement for five minutes going "Spain? Spain . . . I KNOW something important came out of Spain!" Good call on the Don, obvs.

Slick, Mishima for sure! But let's preserve Murakami, who helps give my list some unique flavour, and kick off Proust, whom I just picked to be popular, instead.

Enrique, +1 on Eco and Genet, whom I'm embarrassed to have missed. The Name of the Rose and The Miracle of the Rose!

Unlucky, you like all those guys too? We are totally related.

Ok novels -- so we have to start with:

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
Don Quixote by Cervantes
The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette
Germinal by Zola or Madame Bovary by Flaubert -- or both
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
War and Peace by Tolstoy
Kristin Lavransdatter by Undset
Steppenwolf by Hesse
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grasse
A Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez

Thumbs up to you, Jane. I sing your praises in my glass-shattering voice and dream of the day when you'll take me away from my life in this rural backwater with my boorish husband. Break my head open and out would seep the perfume of love. Let's tilt at windmills together! If I were Jesus and you were the Grand Inquisitor, I'd go gladly into the flames.

Does Thousand and One Nights (all prose, interlaced stories) count as a novel? How about the Shahnama (mixed prose and poetry, Epic scale)? The Panchatantra? All would be in my top list if they do.

Shouldn't we break out languages in separate lists? I suspect my list of Russians is longer than my list of Brits. And when do we get the Irish up?

Everything on Jane's list is worthy, though Fyodor ought to have three novels on any list that gives Tolstoy one.

Message edited by its author, Nov 3, 2009, 11:34pm.

HAH absolutely. And I'd like to get rid of 100 years of Solitude and put Oblomov on it.

I'm not limiting the list in my head to ten but, treating it like a super-duper select list:

I like Eco, but don't think he makes a list like this. Calvino on the other hand, if on a winter's night a traveller ought to survive the test of time but I'm not sure it makes a list this selective.

Hesse certainly wouldn't make it.

Is Tale of Genji really all that, or is it more of historical importance?

Quixote and Karamazov are musts on the list. The rest I am not certain of - except there must be a Dumas.

Message edited by its author, Nov 4, 2009, 3:04pm.

14> I'm overwhelmed and swept off my feet -- but way too old for you.

16> of course you would, Murr -- anything Russian over anything that arose in the Americas ;-)

17> Yes, Genji is all that and more.

Message edited by its author, Nov 4, 2009, 3:12pm.

18 - Great, another book I need to buy and read!

I'm glad Dumas is getting so much love!

20 et al: Swashbuckling adventures never get old, do they? I agree that Walter Scott doesn't stand the test of time. I also think FSF doesn't, and for the same reason, but of course I am probably largely alone (I recently read the Great Gatsby for the first time ever, and I don't know, I don't think it has staying power).

For humor that has lasted (at least in the US) - what about Mark Twain? In a conversation yesterday about kids being bored by church services I remarked that his description of this very subject is still completely fresh and real. Some things don't change even if kids back in the day didn't have electronic stuff...

Hi people,
I agree with most of the authors that have been mentioned, but what about Zweig? also zola, of course, and montaigne. Then there's dostoevski (can't leave him out) and Kafka and Goethe.. I love murakami too, but that's another story.
also, i know it's kind of off topic, but can anyone recommend a good contemporary american author? thanks

22: I just discovered Zweig myself (thanks LT) and I really like his fiction and non-fiction too.

Regarding contemporary American authors, I like Denis Johnson, William Vollmann, Paul Auster and Colson Whitehead most. Generally, I like an author's earlier books better (true of most authors!) Vollmann's Fathers and Crows concerns the Jesuits/French early travails in North America and it is marvelous.

Message edited by its author, Nov 5, 2009, 2:43pm.

>22 Well, but why another story? People seem to keep him out of the "literary"box for no reason I can see.

Totally with you on Montaigne, though. And I love Zola, so I don't know why I hesitate on him. But I do!

23: thanks for the reading suggestions! Of all the american authors you mention, i'm only familiar with paul auster's work.

24: don't get me wrong, i'm not leaving Murakami "out of the literary box", it's just that for some reason it felt weird putting his work next to the other authors i mentioned. I love zola mostly because each of his novels portrays a different member of the same family. I don't know why but i always thought that was brilliant.

I know they aren't novels but what about the short stories of Anton Chekhov and Isaac Babel?

Message edited by its author, Nov 5, 2009, 5:42pm.

26> I like Babel. Only Chekhov I've read was "The Bet", I think.

If we're talking about short stories, I would also consider Ryunosuke Akutagawa.

>25 Yeah, I remember how excited I got when I picked up Nana in the bookstore and realized what was going on.

22, 24> As much as I like him I don't think Montaigne did novels i thought his thing was essays.

13> Princess of Cleves? Really? I think Thomas Mann is way better than la Fayette and probably deserves a place on that list.

I just picked up The Princess of Cleeves today based on janeajones having it on her list - happened upon it secondhand - had actually never even heard of it until this thread. Did you not like it, unlucky? I'll second your Thomas Mann, though. What's your favorite Mann you'd say?

Pardon me, time now for my rest cure.

30: I loved the Princess of Cleves and have read it several times. While it is obviously reflecting the values of the time it was written and its ending is kind of irritating to a 21st century American, it's still quite compelling to me as a novel.

Henry, definetely "The Magic Mountain".

But Mann has an incredible bench. Not just Buddenbrooks in there vying for second but Doctor Faustus, too; little novels and Novellas like Black Swan and Transposed Heads (one of my personal favorites) and Felix Krull. Great essays.

I've never even tackled Joseph, but it is high on my list of Alps needing to be climbed.

I think Mann could fill a list of 10 out by himself. Certainly on the German list, Mann would be like Faulkner on the American list.

100 % agreed A_musing.

I did tackle the Joseph Cycle and it is very very good. But it is quiet an effort to read because Mann forces the reader to slow down the reading pace to a pace more suited in biblical times than to our high speed world.

Don't forget "death in Venice" which is superb too.

But the Magnus Opus is the Magic Mountain which I read again and again since 1989 and I will never tire of that masterpiece. For me it is the book of all books.

I need to read Mann. Magic Mountain in 2011?

No, just drop everything and join Hans Castorp on that little train up the Magic Mountain right now.

I need to read Mann too. I started Buddenbrooks about 25 years ago and was so bored I nodded off, dropped the book on my left foot, cracked the end bone in the second toe and was in plaster for a month. I have avoided his books since as a health risk.

I have read Death in Venice a few times, though, a slimmer and less perilous volume. I adore Visconti's movie.

Message edited by its author, Nov 9, 2009, 7:43pm.

There is Mann for non-Mann readers. Among the big works, Doctor Faustus, especially if you have a musical bent, and, among the little works, Transposed Heads.

I will confess, Death in Venice is the one bit of Mann I've read that continues to elude me. I don't know why, but it leaves me unsettled and unsatisfied.

I love Mann, but he is best read slowly, sitting back and savoring, sort of like Proust. Not at all the flash and excitement of Kafka or Joyce.

Death in Venice is a dreamy stunner, in my opinion, although certainly unsettling and unsatisfying, A_musing. A little too freaky-Nietzschean to read like The Magic Mountain, but with commonalities to some of the stories--Mario and the Magician, Tonio Kroeger. Still haven't gotten to Buddenbrooks or Doctor Faustus, but ever since I read The Magic Mountain I find myself missing it all wistful, so maybe I should use that wist and, like, get to it?

How about The Holy Sinner? The title alone sounds fascinating. I've got it, but haven't read it - typical relationship between most books & me.
Thoughts anyone on The Holy Sinner?

And we will definitely read some Mann in 2011. Remind me if I forget.

Message edited by its author, Nov 9, 2009, 8:18pm.

I love the reviews.

Well, I own it , but haven't opened it. I'm game.

Perhaps that is not the best phrase in this case.

"I love Mann, but he is best read slowly, sitting back and savoring, sort of like Proust. Not at all the flash and excitement of Kafka or Joyce".

Absolutely right A_musing

but like Proust there is so much in the lines , under the lines and between the lines you get dizzy.