Let’s talk about translated literature – or else Nick Barley might tell us off again next year. But of course I’ve got this wrong – no Murakami! No Cercas! No Knausgaard! No Bolaño! Anyway, this is my top 10, in no particular order, as of 11 June 2015 (they could be different tomorrow). So I’ve included personal favourites, recent prizewinners, top sellers, suggestions from Twitter, and the wise recommendations of friends and colleagues: it’s an eclectic list. Nobody needs me to tell them that Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Don Quixote are quite good. In compiling my list, I decided to steer clear of the classics. Nobody needs me to tell them that Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Don Quixote are quite good Just 3% of books published in the UK have been translated from a foreign language, according to a recent report. And last week Marina Warner, who chaired the Man Booker international prize this year, said we could be “ oddly provincial in outlook” when it comes to literature. Yesterday, Nick Barley, director of the Edinburgh international book festival, said that British “reading habits are something of an embarrassment”. As one Twitter user wrote, when I, panic-stricken at the riches that lay before me, asked for recommendations: “Isn’t this like … an endless list of the greatest books of all time?”
Thanks a lot, Comment is free, for asking me to come up with a list of the top 10 “must read” translated novels.
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