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Comment by diego_moita | Hacker News Reader

One thing that bothers me about the English literary culture is how indifferent it is to writers in other languages. Borges always was my best example. Another one is the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa.

What other non-english writers do you think should receive more world attention?

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I understand what you are saying, but Borges was always very thankful to American scholars having first discovered him at a time when he felt no one in Argentina cared about him.

As many things in Latin America (and in non-US countries), it wasn't until the US praised him that he became popular back home.

English-speaking scholars actually loved Borges and wanted to get him published soon and help him out.

I don't know about that. Borges, Sartre, Nabokov were widely translated and read. Among the less purely intellectual, St. Exupery, Coelho, Umberto Eco, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, are regularly found in US bookstores.

In fairness, much of Nabokov's work was originally in English, like Conrad. But to your list, I would add Kundera, Kafka, Mann, Garcia Marquez, Murakami, Chekhov, ... to name just a few authors one easily finds in American bookstores, and who are often read by American students.

The major 19th-century French authors have also long been standards in the US, both among general readers and in the reading list of K-12 education: Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Gustave Flaubert, Jules Verne, etc. However that was established in a period when American literary culture was heavily influenced by the French one.

> English literary culture is [...] indifferent [...] to writers in other languages.

That's particularly true of booksellers in England, so I'm not sure whether the resulting landscape is a cause or an effect of commercial arrangements. Outside of the London - Oxbridge axis, it's very hard to find bookshops stocking anything more than US/UK writers. Coming from Italy (where it's often hard to find works by Italian authors in the average bookshop), it was a shock I never really recovered from.

I take the bait:

Herman Hesse (Steppenwolf if you have to read one book from him).

I preferred The Glass Bead Game.

Also, as with Goethe, don't bother with the English translations.

Yes, I am recommending learning German. You'll thank me.

By "you" I mean anyone reading this, not you, johnchristopher. As you have already read Hesse's work. I presume.

"One thing that bothers me about the English literary culture is how indifferent it is to writers in other languages."

I'm not sure I follow. Why would English "literary culture" care about content in other languages? Are we talking about translations here?

Because, you know, if it's not about the translations. Then I'd pretty much just go ahead and answer your conundrum: "It's in a different language."

Really? Borges casts an enormous shadow across modern American literary culture; you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who is indifferent to him. Like Nabokov, this is partially due to his academic influence, but his writing was hugely influential as well. Most American college students with a literary interest will have at least read the Ficciones.

Raymond Queneau, Italo Calvino, Stanisław Lem.

But, as an outsider, they seem reasonably well known among english speakers (and so is Borges).

It's been some time since I read Lem, but much of his work seemed to be a sort of reinterpretation of Borges. To be clear, I found that a very good thing!

Obviously Julio Cortazar: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio_Cortázar

You'll see patterns, pretty as can be.

For me, László Krasznahorkai, Carsten Jensen, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and Roberto Bolaño are some of the best recent non-English writers around.

Not mentioned yet.

Isabella Allende, Albert Camus, Michel Houellebecq, Günter Grass, Carlos Fuentes, ...

Portuguese writer José Saramago

Brasilian author Paulo Coelho is another great one. His novel "The Alchemist" is a classic.

You must be kidding, right?

Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Roberto Bolaño

Karol Wojtyła

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