Context

We asked a number of our advisors along with several well-known translators to name their favorite twentieth-century novels (translated into English) from Latin American, Italian, Russian and French literature. The following list was compiled from their responses.


Latin American

The Celebration, Ivan Angelo (Brazil)
The Invention of Morel, Adolfo Bioy Casares (Argentina)
Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)
Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)
Infante’s Inferno, Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Cuba)
Three Trapped Tigers, Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Cuba)
The Fear of Losing Eurydice, Julieta Campos (Cuba)
The Kingdom of this World, Alejo Carpentier (Cuba)
62: A Model Kit, Julio Cortazar (Argentina)
Blow-Up and Other Stories, Julio Cortazar (Argentina)
Hopscotch, Julio Cortazar (Argentina)
The Obscene Bird of Night, Jose Donoso (Chile)
Konfidenz, Ariel Dorfman (Chile)
The Death of Artemio Cruz, Carlos Fuentes (Mexico)
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Columbia)
Paradiso, Jose Lezama Lima (Cuba)
Avalovara, Osman Lins (Brazil)
The Queen of the Prisons of Greece, Osman Lins (Brazil)
The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector (Brazil)
A Brief Life, Juan Carlos Onetti (Uruguay)
Palinuro of Mexico, Fernando del Paso (Mexico)
Dear Diego, Elena Poniatowska (Mexico)
Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, Manuel Puig (Argentina)
Heartbreak Tango, Manuel Puig (Argentina)
Kiss of the Spider Woman, Manuel Puig (Argentina)
I the Supreme, Augusto Roa Bastos (Paraguay)
Cobra, Severo Sarduy (Cuba)
The Lizard’s Tail, Luisa Valenzuela (Argentina)
The War of the End of the World, Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)

Italian

Catastrophe, Dino Buzzati
Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino
If on a winter’s night a traveler, Italo Calvino
The Path to the Nest of Spiders, Italo Calvino
t zero, Italo Calvino
Hebdomeros, Giorgio de Chirico
The House on Moon Lake, Francesca Duranti
That Awful Mess on Via Merulana, Carlo Emilio Gadda
The Leopard, Guiseppe di Lampedusa
Gogol’s Wife, Tommaso
Landolfi Kaputt, Curzio Malaparte
What Is This Buzzing? Do You Hear It Too?, Luigi Malerba
The Betrothed, Alessandro Manzoni
History, Elsa Morante
The Woman of Rome, Alberto Moravia
The Iguana, Anna Maria Ortese
Solitudes, Goffredo Parise
The Selected Works of Cesare Pavese Candido, Leonardo Sciascia
The Seed Beneath the Snow, Ignazio Silone
Confessions of Zeno, Italo Svevo
As A Man Grows Older, Italo Svevo
Pereira Declares, Antonio Tabucchi
Women of Messina, Elio Vittorini
A Vittorini Omnibus

Russian

The New Life, Fyodor Abramov
The Burn, Vassily Aksyonov
Kangaroo, Yuz Aleshkovsky
The Collected Stories, Isaac Babel
The Tattered Cloak, Nina Berberlova
St. Petersburg, Andrey Biely
The Monkey Link, Andrei Bitov
Pushkin House, Andrei Bitov
The Zone, Sergei Dovlatov
It’s Me, Eddie, Edward Limonov
Despair, Vladimir Nabokov
The Blue Lantern, Victor Pelevin
The Life of Insects, Victor Pelevin
Immortal Love, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
Third Factory, Viktor Shklovsky
Zoo or Letters Not About Love, Viktor Shklovsky
The Petty Demon, Fyodor Sologub
Another Life and The House on the Embankment, Yuri Trifonov
Lieutenant Kije, Yury Tynyanov
The Radiant Future, Alexander Zinoviev

French

Blue of Noon, Georges Bataille
Story of the Eye, Georges Bataille
The Trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable), Samuel Beckett
Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books, Marcel Benabou
The Diary of a Country Priest, Georges Bernanos
When the Time Comes, Maurice Blanchot
My Friends, Emmanuel Bove
Nadja, Andre Breton
Passing Time, Michel Butor
The Stranger, Albert Camus
The Mustache, Emmanuel Carrere
Death on the Installment Plan, Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The Trilogy (Castle To Castle, North, Rigadoon), Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The Pure and the Impure, Colette
Destroy, She Said, Marguerite Duras
The Ravishing of Lol Stein, Marguerite Duras
Cherokee, Jean Echenoz
Miracle of the Rose, Jean Genet
Our Lady of the Flowers, Jean Genet
The Book of Nights, Sylvie Germain
The Counterfeiters, Andre Gide
Balcony In the Forest, Julien Gracq
Adrienne Mesurat, Julien Green
The Book of Questions, Edmond Jabes
The Bathing Girl, Ludovic Janvier
The Bathing Huts, Monique Lange
A. O. Barnabooth: His Diary, Valery Larbaud
La Batarde, Violette Leduc
Man’s Fate, Andre Malraux
Cat’s Grin, Francois Maspero
The Marquise went out at Five, Claude Mauriac
Therese, A Portrait in Four Parts, Francois Mauriac
Sweet Tooth, Yves Navarre
The Mise-en-Scène, Claude Ollier
W, or the Memory of Childhood, Georges Perec
Life A User’s Manual, Georges Perec
The Inquisitory, Robert Pingetoks.d
Someone, Robert Pinget
Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust (translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin)
The Bark Tree, Raymond Queneau
Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau
Pierrot Mon Ami, Raymond Queneau
In the Labyrinth, Alain Robbe-Grillet
Jealousy, Alain Robbe-Grillet
La Maison de Rendez-vous, Alain Robbe-Grillet
The Great Fire of London, Jacques Roubaud
Locus Solus, Raymond Roussel
Impressions of Africa, Raymond Roussel
"fools say," Nathalie Sarraute
Martereau, Nathalie Sarraute
Portrait of a Man Unknown, Nathalie Sarraute
You Don’t Love Yourself, Nathalie Sarraute
The Flanders Road, Claude Simon