Winner of the Goncourt prize in 1933, the most prestigious French literary award, Man’s Fate by André Malraux (1901–76) is part of an intriguing trilogy, including The Conquerors (1928) and The Royal Way (1930). Similar to these two earlier works,… Read More ›
In “Something Unfulfilled,” an epilogue to The Man of Feeling, Javier Marías (1951–2022) compares the writing of fiction to a love’s invention, “discovering or stumbling upon something” where but an image existed before, “its first throb” (Nabokov’s phrase, appropriated by… Read More ›
In the middle of the 20th century Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) published The Mandarins, a novel that won the Prix Goncourt, France’s highest literary honor. In The Mandarins Beauvoir reveals the social and political sentiments of a particular group of… Read More ›
Maíra was the first novel by the Brazilian intellectual Darcy Ribeiro (1922–97), followed by three significant works: Mule (O mulo, 1981), Savage Utopia (Utopia Selvagem, 1982), and My-Self (Migo, 1988). Maíra was translated into English in 1984. Although Ribeiro was… Read More ›
Although Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett is the first novel written by Georges Simenon (1903–89) in the highly popular detective Maigret series, most of the hallmarks of the series as a whole are apparent in this work. The tall, burly,… Read More ›
Considered a landmark in world literature, The Magic Mountain by the highly respected German novelist Thomas Mann (1875–1955) reveals the conflicting political and cultural trends that divided families and nations throughout Europe in the early 20th century. Set on a… Read More ›
The novelistic memoir The Lover by Marguerite Duras (1914–96) is a modernist story of sexual coming of age in French colonial Vietnam. It is also a portrait of the young author. It is the most accessible and by far the… Read More ›
The Russian-born novelist Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) wrote Lolita, his 12th published novel, between 1948 and 1953. Lolita is a reworking of an earlier version of the story The Enchanter (Volshebnik), written in 1939 in Paris. Writing the text on index… Read More ›
Eberhard Starusch has a number of problems: His teeth hurt, his dentist constantly quotes Seneca, and one of his students is trying to devise a dramatic protest against the Vietnam War. In this 1969 allegorical novel by the renowned German… Read More ›
This last novel by the popular French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–44) is ostensibly a children’s book, set in the author’s familiar and cherished landscape of the Sahara of northern Africa. Although the central character is a pilot, this tale… Read More ›
A Little Ball Launched by a Dwarf, by Korean author Cho Se-hui (1942–2022) is a collection of 12 sequential stories, including such diverse titles as “Knifeblade,” “Moebius Strip,” “A Little Ball Launched by a Dwarf,” “Spaceship,” “On the Footbridge,” “The… Read More ›
Mexican writer Laura Esquivel (1950– ) wrote Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies as an extraordinary tale of the unique relationship between the magic of love and the sensuality of food…. Read More ›
A historical novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896–1957), The Leopard was one of the most successful literary works of 20th-century European literature. The plot is straightforward: In 1860 Giuseppe Garibaldi and his forces have landed in Marsala (Sicily) to… Read More ›
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