An East European Reading List

Unwittingly I’ve been accumulating quite a stack of East European writers to read, so I plan to tackle the following during the first six months of this year. My eastward direction is perhaps a guilty reaction to my failure to head west to pursue my commitment to the Savage Detectives Group Read. I’m consumed with Krasznahorkai at present and don’t wish to read anything else for a few more weeks.

  1. The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
  2. War & War – László Krasznahorkai
  3. Sátántango – László Krasznahorkai
  4. Embers – Sándor Márai
  5. Parallel Stories – Péter Nádas
  6. Fiasco – Imre Kertész
  7. Dukla – Andrzej Stasiuk
  8. Memories of the Future – Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
  9. Theory of Prose – Viktor Shklovsky
  10. The Book Of Hrabal– Péter Esterházy
  11. The Foundation Pit – Andrei Platonov
  12. Skylark – Dezső Kosztolányi
  13. The Notebook / The Proof / The Third Lie – Ágota Kristóf

16 thoughts on “An East European Reading List

  1. Most tempting. Lots of books on my vague someday list.

    Except for the Krasznahorkai – March is the Krasznahorkai party at Wuthering Expectations. The party is scheduled for whenever I finish Satantango.

    • I’m excited about Satantango, both reading the book and seeing the film (though I’ll have to lay on cocktails and dinner to persuade my wife to watch the film).

  2. Thank you for the list. I just discovered Krasznahorkai and Platonov so I’m eager to read more by them. And The Book Of Hrabal sounds intriguing since I’m going through his work…anything on him, even fiction involving him, I want to check out. Again, thanks.

    • Very welcome, Dwight, I intend to get around to Hrabal this year, but someone inspired me to buy The Book of Hrabal so oddly I’ll be reading fiction about him before I read his work. That might be a first.

  3. Given such a feast of promising titles to lose oneself into, you can hardly be blamed for bailing out on the Bolaño. I’m most curious about Krasznahorkai and Krzhizhanovsky, both cool-sounding names on my wishlist.

  4. I also recommend Hrabal. This is a fantastic list. I’ve read Embers and Have Nadas’ The Book of Memories on my list to read this year. I also recommend Tokarczuk.

    • Thanks, Kinna, Hrabal is definitely on my list to read some time, perhaps not in the first half of this year though. I’ve added Tokarczuk to my to-be-explored list. Thanks.

  5. Thanks for the list. I have been thinking of reading more from the East European region (Europe in general) and your list would be helpful to me. The title ‘Parallel Stories’ intrigues me of the lot.

Post a Comment

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s