July 2014
Books in translation
The three musketeers by Alexandre
Dumas
The book, originally published in French in
1844, is Dumas's most famous story and
possibly the most famous historical novel of
all time.
Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
This book is the best known of Dostoevsky's masterpieces. Dostoevsky's
drama of sin, guilt, and redemption transforms the sordid story of an old
woman's murder into the 19th Century's most profound and compelling
philosophical novel.
The leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa
Translated from Italian, the story chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and
society. Published posthumously in 1958 after two rejections by the leading
Italian publishing houses, it became Italy’s top-selling novel and is considered
one of the most important novels in modern Italian literature. In 2012 The
Observer named it as one of The 10 best historical novels.
The plague, the fall; exile and the kingdom, and selected essays by
Albert Camus
Originally published in France between the 1947 and 1957 by one of the most
brilliant and influential thinkers of the 20th Century, this single volume is an
examination of moral dilemmas.
The name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The author’s first novel is a historical murder mystery set in an Italian
monastery in 1327. First published in Italian in 1980 it was translated into
English in 1983.
The Magic Mountains by Thomas Mann
Translated from German this book is an epic account of life in a Swiss
sanatorium in the years before the First World War.
Master and Margarita by Michail Bukgakov
Translated from Russian this is a devastating satire. Combining two distinct
yet interwoven parts – one set in Moscow under Stalin and the other in
Jerusalem under Pilate, it has several story-lines where history, religion and
politics are intertwined.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Translated from Spanish this book made the Colombian author widely popular
and led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature as well as the
Rómulo Gallegos Prize in 1972.
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Written in 1922 and translated from German, the novel deals with the spiritual
journey of self-discovery by a man named Siddhartha during the time of the
Gautama Buddha.
The Iron King by Maurice Druon
Translated from French this book is the first in a seven books historical series
The Accursed Kings. George R.R. Martin has called The Accursed Kings ‘the
original Game of Thrones’. The story is set in 1314, the year in which the Trial
of the Templars reached its conclusion.
Difficult loves by Italo Calvino
A tale of love and loneliness in which the author blends reality and illusion.
The complete short stories of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka
This volume contains all of Kafka's shorter fiction, from fragments, parables
and sketches to longer tales. Together they reveal the breadth of Kafka's
literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought.
The map and the territory by Michel Houellebecq
This novel by the French author revolves around a successful artist, and
involves the fictional murder of Houellebecq. Published in 2010 the book
received the prestigious Prix Goncourt.
The wind-up bird chronicle by Haruki Murakami
A brilliant novel which sketches in stark language, the crushing isolation which
lurks beneath the surface of contemporary Japanese culture.
Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo
A novel of politics, terror and human frailty set amid the blood-steeped Maoist
insurgency of Peru's Shining Path. An eloquent political thriller, the book is a
searching meditation on the blurred boundaries between good and evil, and
order and chaos.
The elegance of the hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
This book follows events in the life of a concierge, Renée Michel, whose
deliberately concealed intelligence is uncovered by an unstable but
intellectually precocious girl named Paloma.
The girl who saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson
An unlikely but likable follow-up to The 100-Year-Old Man.
The infatuations by
Translated form Spanish this is a novel about a murder as a metaphysical
enquiry and addresses questions of life, death and morality.
Look who's back by Timur Vermes
Hitler returns to life in modern Berlin and becomes a media sensation.
The Detour by Gerbrand Bakker
This book won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2013. It is a study of
self-searching, self-assertion and the nature of pain, narrated by a middleaged Dutch woman who has fled her husband to live in solitude in rural
Wales.
I curse the river of time by Per Petterson
This Norwegian story is an honest, heartbreaking yet humorous portrayal of a
complicated mother-son relationship told in Petterson's precise and beautiful
prose. The book was shortlisted for the 2011 Independent Foreign Fiction
Award.
Death in the family by Karl Ove Knausgaard
This is a remarkable novel written with painful honesty about the author’s
childhood and teenage years. This book is part of the six books series My
Struggle an international sensation. A Death in the Family was awarded the
prestigious Brage Award and shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction
Award in 2013.