Literature European Authors or Books that were significant to you?

Now that @Reineart mention E. Fromm... I want also mention Thomas Mann... one of those Authors that flee from the Nazis...

Books like the "The Magic Mountain" and "Dr. Faustus"... really are examples of those books that I think only could have been produced in the turbulent first part of the XX Century...

(Unfortunately I have only read them "piecewise"... :embarassed:... but one day I will give myself time to read them from begininng to end.)

An interesting documentary about the Exile of Thomas Mann...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5TMUdoIMK0

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Jane Austen - purely epic and highly addictive. A modern female Shakespeare. Pride and Prejudice is one of my most favorite books followed by her Emma... I love the understated heroic protagonist that is so affirmative and aware of herself at any given point of time. Elizabeth and Mr Darcy follow my famous couple competition taking first runner up right after Romeo and Juliet and their tragic love story of a love that was meant to be but not accepted :(
 
Jules Verne is definitely something (or was, you'd find it boring if you were born in this digital age...), and le Petit Prince is one of these timeless yarns. I am surprised nobody named Charles Dickens. I used to read a lot of Arturo Perez-Reverte, his Alatriste is as good as the columns he used to write in El País. Tartarin de Tarascon from Daudet has a special place on my shelves, as Flaubert's Salambo has, and a lot of the European myths (Irish, germanic, scandinavian,...) as well as lots of folktale books from all corners of the continent. The only living European author I still read is belgian writer Amelie Nothomb, her mastery and usage of the french language has no equal.
 
Not to disparage any of the many other great European authors I've read, but Jules Verne had a big early influence on me. I was also struck deeply by Hasek.
 
Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities. Sydney Carton is a character I can relate to,(a man with great potential who never quite realizes it in life).I pray my end is as noble as his.
 
Friedrich Nietzsche!


I also like Neitzsche alot and Machiavelli too.

2 of my other favorites (books) are "Les Miserables" and "Beowulf".....both very sad.

and of course, Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein's Monster"


but isn't it weird how Mein Kampf by Hitler is the best seller of all time second only to the Bible?
 
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Les miserables takes an S big guy, its a silent S and ’les’ sounds somewaht like ´lay’ in english grammar.
 
Martin Luther Commentary on Galatians, John Calvin The Institutes, John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress, John Foxe Acts and Monuments,Plato The Republic, Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities.
 
I could never get into poetry, but looking at my Kindle I can see that I frequently reread Pride & Prejudice, Wouk's Winds of War (I guess an American fits as a European author), Lord of the Rings (though I feel like a geek for saying so), Gone With the Wind, and the Patrick O'Brian seafaring novels. Clavell's Shogun also gets a frequent reading.

For mysteries I prefer Dick Francis, his characters are so well drawn.

Because I'm cheap, I've explored the free books available on Kindle extensively and that led me to Stoker's Dracula (a revelation) and Tarzan. The latter, while not great literature, is a fantastic window into a previous era when readers could be swept up by such tales of distant places.
 
I could never get into poetry, but looking at my Kindle I can see that I frequently reread Pride & Prejudice, Wouk's Winds of War (I guess an American fits as a European author), Lord of the Rings (though I feel like a geek for saying so), Gone With the Wind, and the Patrick O'Brian seafaring novels. Clavell's Shogun also gets a frequent reading.

For mysteries I prefer Dick Francis, his characters are so well drawn.

Because I'm cheap, I've explored the free books available on Kindle extensively and that led me to Stoker's Dracula (a revelation) and Tarzan. The latter, while not great literature, is a fantastic window into a previous era when readers could be swept up by such tales of distant places.

I see we have somewhat similar tastes. I have a one volume collection of all of Jane Austen's novels and re-read them every couple of years. I'm getting more and more fond of "Persuasion". Same for Gone with the Wind, and yes, I like the Winds of War and Shogun as well. I've already said I love Lord of the Rings. :)

I've taken to getting all my fiction books on loan from the library. As long as you have a library card, getting it on a kindle is a click and done. You can extend it for more than two weeks as well. If I really want it permanently, I'll buy it. Sometimes it's almost as cheap to get a paperback good quality used copy as to get it on kindle, and for certain things, I really want "the book".
 
I see we have somewhat similar tastes. I have a one volume collection of all of Jane Austen's novels and re-read them every couple of years. I'm getting more and more fond of "Persuasion". Same for Gone with the Wind, and yes, I like the Winds of War and Shogun as well. I've already said I love Lord of the Rings. :)

I've taken to getting all my fiction books on loan from the library. As long as you have a library card, getting it on a kindle is a click and done. You can extend it for more than two weeks as well. If I really want it permanently, I'll buy it. Sometimes it's almost as cheap to get a paperback good quality used copy as to get it on kindle, and for certain things, I really want "the book".

You're a bit like my wife then. She wants "the book," to have the feel of it in her hands as she leaves (leafs?) through the pages. I'm cool with either.

I suppose I like that both Jane Austen and Patrick O'Brian are my great likes (I also like The Influence of Sea Power on History). I've always wanted to be eclectic! Or should I say, interesting?

There is a great gap between the great Austen, P&P and Emma, and the lesser. Persuasian is good, but Mansfield Park is rather dreary and no one would read Northanger Abbey if the author hadn't written P&P.
 
It's kind of strange to talk about "european authors". I mean it's too wide. Either way, Dostoyefski for me.
 
My "go bag" for the Apocalypse would include a complete Shakespeare, a complete volume of English poetry, a complete Dante, and a collection of other Italian poets, plus the St. James Bible, even though it's not the Catholic version and I don't go to Church anymore. :)

If I thought I had room for novels: The Complete Jane Austen, Crime and Punishment, Zeno's Conscience, and Il Gattopardo. Maybe Little Women and my copy of Calvino's Italian fairy tales.

Have to think of the next generation too. :)
 
One of the most important and significant novels for me is The Garden of Forking Paths. It was written in 1941, the year after the outbreak of World War II.
 

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