Best World Authors of 20th Century

[Danenania]

Personally I prefer international literature to American in my reading, so I'm interested in what everyone thinks. It's certainly a much tougher question just based on the sheer quantity of high quality work out there. But give it a shot.

[Claunchy]

I'm probably not well read enough to give a legit answer to this question, but I'm going with Hesse.

[jason_t]

Italo Calvino
Albert Camus
Jose Luis Borges
Guenter Grass
Herman Hesse
Thomas Mann
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
V.S. Naipaul
Jose Saramago
George Bernard Shaw

[mslif]

[ QUOTE ]
Albert Camus

[/ QUOTE ] and I'll have to add Marcel Proust

[TheBlueMonster]

[ QUOTE ]
Jose Luis Borges


[/ QUOTE ]
Greatest short story of all time "Garden of the Forking Paths"
Another great author is WG Sebald.

[TheBlueMonster]

How do you forget James Joyce?

[luckyharr]

Joyce

[Danenania]

[ QUOTE ]
Italo Calvino
Albert Camus
Jose Luis Borges
Guenter Grass
Herman Hesse
Thomas Mann
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
V.S. Naipaul
Jose Saramago
George Bernard Shaw

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a good list. Is it in order?

A few I must add are Kafka, Joyce, Nabakov (since he's not American), Jerzy Kosinski, and Milan Kundera.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
Italo Calvino
Albert Camus
Jose Luis Borges
Guenter Grass
Herman Hesse
Thomas Mann
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
V.S. Naipaul
Jose Saramago
George Bernard Shaw

[/ QUOTE ]

Interesting list. I've got to give a lot of credit to a list that includes Naipaul, Camus, and a huge favorite of mine, Calvino.

I don't think many people read widely and deeply enough these days to be able to do much more than venture their personal preferences and prejudices on a question like this.

Having read all but Sarmango on that list, I'd pick Calvino for the truly astonishing breadth and inventiveness. I couldn't put him in Camus' class for the depth of his themes, though.

I also think Celine is world class and very important. Like Pound, he liked the Nazis a little more than was fashionable, though, and his prewar and postwar writings both have been unjustly tainted for it.

And Mark Twain lasted till 1910, though we'd really consider him an author of the century before, when most of his stuff was written.

[KDawgCometh]

put sarte on that list too

[edtost]

kafka, joyce, nabokov as previously mentioned; dostoyevsky is too early right?

[erby]

[ QUOTE ]

Gabriel Garcia Marquez


[/ QUOTE ]

And it's not even close...

ERBY /images/graemlins/spade.gif

[Danenania]

Yukio Mishima and Salman Rushdie are a couple of non-Western choices (although I think Rushdie was raised in England?). What are thoughts those two?

[TheBlueMonster]

I don't know if you'd get away with calling Rushdie a greatest author. However, one author not mentioned thus far is Virginia Woolf (even though I don't love her)

[KDawgCometh]

[ QUOTE ]
dostoyevsky is too early right?

[/ QUOTE ]


I think of him more as a 19th century author

[Chairman Wood]

My 3 favs
Marquez
Joyce
Rushdie

[stigmata]

Dostoyevsky died 1895.

Great list so far, but I would add:

Umberto Eco
Primo Levi
Aldous Huxley

[diebitter]

William Golding

George Orwell. It'd be a better world if everyone could comprehend 1984.

[Voltron87]

roald dahl is awesome. henry sugar, his two autobiographies were especially good.

[Sightless]

Mikhail Bulgakov

[sam h]

[ QUOTE ]
Another great author is WG Sebald.

[/ QUOTE ]

[Scotch78]

Hesse, Huxley and Orwell all get another vote from me.

Scott

[TheBlueMonster]

[ QUOTE ]

Quote:

Another great author is WG Sebald.




[/ QUOTE ]

/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[britspin]

All too worthy. The best writer in the 20th century was P G Wodehouse. God knows that the 20th century needed hunmour more than anything else...

[InchoateHand]

Rushdie was not raised in England, and you can definitely get away with adding him to a list of "Great" authors form the 20th Century.

I agree with the others as well. Its a true pity that Sebald was taken from us just when he was getting going. I can split most of my moods in life between Vertigo and The Emigrants. Actually, come to think of it, thats a pretty narrow emotional register. Oh well.

I too am a fan of good old Louis-Ferdinand Destouches, especially Castle to Castle (over Journey to the End of the Night ) in Manheim's English variant, as my French is not up to par (Ralph Manheim is Gunter Grasse's trusted translator as well). Vitoux's excellent biography of Celine is available to the reader in English, and I would recommend that as well.

In terms of additions to this evolving list, off the top of my head I would feel obliged to add Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Danarto, Danilo Kis, Ivan Klima, Solzhenitsyn, Tadeusz Borowski, Wole Soyinka, and no doubt countless others if my memory were not failing me.

[jason_t]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Jose Luis Borges


[/ QUOTE ]
Greatest short story of all time "Garden of the Forking Paths"


[/ QUOTE ]

I agree, but I have special place in my /images/graemlins/heart.gif for The Book of Sand.

[jason_t]

[ QUOTE ]
How do you forget James Joyce?

[/ QUOTE ]

Because I could never be bothered to read him.

[jason_t]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Italo Calvino
Albert Camus
Jose Luis Borges
Guenter Grass
Herman Hesse
Thomas Mann
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
V.S. Naipaul
Jose Saramago
George Bernard Shaw

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a good list. Is it in order?

A few I must add are Kafka, Joyce, Nabakov (since he's not American), Jerzy Kosinski, and Milan Kundera.

[/ QUOTE ]

The list was in alphabetical order.

I'm meh on Kafka, probably won't ever read Joyce, I'm ashamed that I forgot Nabokov, haven't read Kosinski and am on the fence on including Kundera.

[KDawgCometh]

[ QUOTE ]
George Orwell. It'd be a better world if everyone could comprehend 1984.

[/ QUOTE ]


well, right now we are living in 1984 for the most part

[jason_t]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Italo Calvino
Albert Camus
Jose Luis Borges
Guenter Grass
Herman Hesse
Thomas Mann
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
V.S. Naipaul
Jose Saramago
George Bernard Shaw

[/ QUOTE ]

[...]
Having read all but Sarmango on that list, I'd pick Calvino for the truly astonishing breadth and inventiveness.

[/ QUOTE ]

Please read Saramago; given what you wrote I think you'd love him.

[jason_t]

[ QUOTE ]
dostoyevsky is too early right?

[/ QUOTE ]

19th century.

[jason_t]

[ QUOTE ]
Dostoyevsky died 1895.

Great list so far, but I would add:

Umberto Eco
Primo Levi
Aldous Huxley

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't like Eco. I have always wanted to read Levi. What does Huxley have aside from Brave New World?

[jason_t]

[ QUOTE ]
George Orwell. It'd be a better world if everyone could comprehend 1984.

[/ QUOTE ]

lol

[ethan]

[ QUOTE ]
Italo Calvino
Albert Camus
Jose Luis Borges
Guenter Grass
Herman Hesse
Thomas Mann
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
V.S. Naipaul
Jose Saramago
George Bernard Shaw

[/ QUOTE ]

My favorite from the list (of those I've read). For anyone who hasn't read him - there's a great book of his collected fictions (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140286802/qid=1125553783/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-2857921-7586228?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) that I'd recommend as a starting point.

edit - those of you that like Calvino, what should I start with?

[jason_t]

[ QUOTE ]

edit - those of you that like Calvino, what should I start with?

[/ QUOTE ]

If on a winter's night a traveler

[TheBlueMonster]

[ QUOTE ]

Quote:

How do you forget James Joyce?



Because I could never be bothered to read him.

[/ QUOTE ]

touche`

[Los Feliz Slim]

I'm certain that mentioning Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace in this thread will get me in all sorts of trouble, but there you go.