A couple of links, a few words, and more books. OR: Reading Globally
This has been percolating for a while, but I've recently stumbled upon some old notes, so here goes!
There is often debate about reading less anglo-centric and/or "first-world"-centric books.
Recently (Uh, in February.) 
effex asked for some recs, and there are already quite a few listed. (The requirement was for them to be centered around female, queer, and/or COCs) Just a short while later she was looking for introductory books to the SFF genre, and
elspethdixon wrote how anglo-centric the list was. Which was something that I could help with, so I posted a giant list of non-English-language SFF books, as well as a couple of zines and blogs. I might as well replicate it here: The non-English perspective, I can haz it. This will be in no particular order, and there will be books, authors and websites. Some of these will be hard to get (or occasionally nonexistent in English). I'm going to mention them anyway, because they might still be translated, or there might be others who speak the language in question. - Bernard Werber - a French author. His most famous work is Empire of the Ants (Les Fourmis), but my favourite is L'Empire des Anges. - Os Dias da Peste by Fábio Fernandes, a Brazilian author. - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards (blog), they always have great recs. - The SFWA European Hall of Fame (anthology) - Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler (zine) - The Apex Book of World SF, edited by Lavie Tidhar, an Israeli writer whose work you should also check out. In relation to that, The World SF News Blog. - The Witcher series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. It's a bit "blockbuster fantasy", but the ironic humour is cool (So is the video game, but you know ...). - Uh, Jules Verne, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas*obviously*. - Anything Pierre Bordage has ever written, pretty much. - TesseractsQ, an anthology of French Canadian authors - a couple of the Japanese light novels - Kino's Journey especially comes to mind - The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach (German) ((Carpets of HUMAN HAIR btw)) - Wolfgang Hohlbein (German) - God, this dude was my favourite author growing up. He's ridiculously prolific, and only the manga adaptation of his fantastic Magic Moon trilogy has made it to the US. I'd rec Märchenmond (Magic Moon), Krieg der Engel (with the inept guardian angel, LOL, ILU [Spoiler]), Unterland, Die Chronik der Unsterblichen, Die Templerin and its follow-ups (yes, a female templar, who is in love with a Tuareg warrior and saves the Christian king's life and is totally badass, re-read now plzkthanx (said king has leprosy and is also totally badass!)), ... - Walter Moers (German), who does have English translations! *recs City of Dreaming Books like whoa* He's famous for his incredibly intricate wordplays and word-mysteries, so I don't know how well that translates. - Pierre Grimbert (French) - Henri Loevenbruck (French), the Gallica series especially. (Ha, translations available in several languages - but no English.) - Jean-Louis Fetjaine (French) - Pierre Pével (French) - one of his books has just been translated into English (The Cardinal's Blades), and I've seen it described as "The Three Musketeers meets The Dirty Dozen with added dragons". Which is pretty accurate. - On that note, the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire, a French prize for "fantastic" literature, is a great source for books to read. - Licia Troisi (Italian) - W. J. Maryson (Dutch) - Margit Sandemo (Norwegian Swedish) - Stanislaw Lem (Polish, also: Duh. It's Stanislaw Lem.) - Dmitry Glukhovsky (Russian), more specifically his novel Metro 2033. The sequel (surprisingly, Metro 2034) is available online - in Russian. - Sergey Lukyanenko (Russian), the Night Watch tetralogy. - Micha Pansi (Swiss), a female fantasy author who also plays guitar in a heavy metal band. Just thought I'd add that little tidbit. - Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Spanish) - Liliana Bodoc (Argentinian) - Mária Szepes (Hungarian) - The Red Lion - Michael Ende (German) - Neverending Story, Momo (!!! READ IT !!!)
Of course this is still an incredibly Western-centric list. However, this is where my favourite book-catalogueing site comes in! LibraryThing has a group called Reading Globally. The forums are absolutely chock-full of recs, especially since Depressaholic (at least I'm reasonably sure that he was the first?) posted his "Around the World in 192 Books" challenge. Sounds awesome? It is. [This is my profile by the way. :)] Happy reading! P.S.: If you have any recs or links, please do send them my way!
This entry is a mirror of http://zanzando.dreamwidth.org/12219.html |
comments | Please comment at Dreamwidth, using OpenID if you don't have an account. Or ask me for an invite!
effex asked for some recs, and there are already quite a few listed. (The requirement was for them to be centered around female, queer, and/or COCs) Just a short while later she was looking for introductory books to the SFF genre, and
elspethdixon wrote how anglo-centric the list was. Which was something that I could help with, so I posted a giant list of non-English-language SFF books, as well as a couple of zines and blogs. I might as well replicate it here: The non-English perspective, I can haz it. This will be in no particular order, and there will be books, authors and websites. Some of these will be hard to get (or occasionally nonexistent in English). I'm going to mention them anyway, because they might still be translated, or there might be others who speak the language in question. - Bernard Werber - a French author. His most famous work is Empire of the Ants (Les Fourmis), but my favourite is L'Empire des Anges. - Os Dias da Peste by Fábio Fernandes, a Brazilian author. - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards (blog), they always have great recs. - The SFWA European Hall of Fame (anthology) - Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler (zine) - The Apex Book of World SF, edited by Lavie Tidhar, an Israeli writer whose work you should also check out. In relation to that, The World SF News Blog. - The Witcher series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. It's a bit "blockbuster fantasy", but the ironic humour is cool (So is the video game, but you know ...). - Uh, Jules Verne, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas*obviously*. - Anything Pierre Bordage has ever written, pretty much. - TesseractsQ, an anthology of French Canadian authors - a couple of the Japanese light novels - Kino's Journey especially comes to mind - The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach (German) ((Carpets of HUMAN HAIR btw)) - Wolfgang Hohlbein (German) - God, this dude was my favourite author growing up. He's ridiculously prolific, and only the manga adaptation of his fantastic Magic Moon trilogy has made it to the US. I'd rec Märchenmond (Magic Moon), Krieg der Engel (with the inept guardian angel, LOL, ILU [Spoiler]), Unterland, Die Chronik der Unsterblichen, Die Templerin and its follow-ups (yes, a female templar, who is in love with a Tuareg warrior and saves the Christian king's life and is totally badass, re-read now plzkthanx (said king has leprosy and is also totally badass!)), ... - Walter Moers (German), who does have English translations! *recs City of Dreaming Books like whoa* He's famous for his incredibly intricate wordplays and word-mysteries, so I don't know how well that translates. - Pierre Grimbert (French) - Henri Loevenbruck (French), the Gallica series especially. (Ha, translations available in several languages - but no English.) - Jean-Louis Fetjaine (French) - Pierre Pével (French) - one of his books has just been translated into English (The Cardinal's Blades), and I've seen it described as "The Three Musketeers meets The Dirty Dozen with added dragons". Which is pretty accurate. - On that note, the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire, a French prize for "fantastic" literature, is a great source for books to read. - Licia Troisi (Italian) - W. J. Maryson (Dutch) - Margit Sandemo (Norwegian Swedish) - Stanislaw Lem (Polish, also: Duh. It's Stanislaw Lem.) - Dmitry Glukhovsky (Russian), more specifically his novel Metro 2033. The sequel (surprisingly, Metro 2034) is available online - in Russian. - Sergey Lukyanenko (Russian), the Night Watch tetralogy. - Micha Pansi (Swiss), a female fantasy author who also plays guitar in a heavy metal band. Just thought I'd add that little tidbit. - Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Spanish) - Liliana Bodoc (Argentinian) - Mária Szepes (Hungarian) - The Red Lion - Michael Ende (German) - Neverending Story, Momo (!!! READ IT !!!)
Of course this is still an incredibly Western-centric list. However, this is where my favourite book-catalogueing site comes in! LibraryThing has a group called Reading Globally. The forums are absolutely chock-full of recs, especially since Depressaholic (at least I'm reasonably sure that he was the first?) posted his "Around the World in 192 Books" challenge. Sounds awesome? It is. [This is my profile by the way. :)] Happy reading! P.S.: If you have any recs or links, please do send them my way!
This entry is a mirror of http://zanzando.dreamwidth.org/12219.html |
comments | Please comment at Dreamwidth, using OpenID if you don't have an account. Or ask me for an invite!