Book recommendations: epic non-American literary fiction
July 16, 2024 3:58 AM Subscribe
Looking for book recommendations to match the following: epic human stories, literary fiction (/beautiful language), not American? See examples of current favorites inside.
Here is a list of some of my favorite books ever:
Karl Ove Knausgaard - My Struggle 1-6
Elena Ferrante - The Napoli Trilogy
Annie Ernaux - The Years
Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
Nino Haratischwili - The Eigth Life
Tove Ditlevsen - The Copenhagen Trilogy
Lea Ypi - Freedom
Min Jin Lee - Pachinko
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun
Marjane Satrapi - Persepolis
Madeleine Miller - Circe & Song of Achilles*
I have realized what I especially like about them is that they span a long period of time (a significant period of one character’s life up until several generations of a family). In addition, I have gained knowledge about a culture and/or time period which is not US American**. At the same time, they are all very well written and the stories are enthralling - but of course that last point is more subjective.
Any recommendations to add to my summer reading list?
* I know this one is a bit the odd one out as the author is American and it could be called fantasy, but scratches the same itch where I got a lot of insight about Greek mythology while reading an amazing story.
** Nothing against US literature, by the way, I just read a lot of American books already and need less recommendations there.
Here is a list of some of my favorite books ever:
Karl Ove Knausgaard - My Struggle 1-6
Elena Ferrante - The Napoli Trilogy
Annie Ernaux - The Years
Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
Nino Haratischwili - The Eigth Life
Tove Ditlevsen - The Copenhagen Trilogy
Lea Ypi - Freedom
Min Jin Lee - Pachinko
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun
Marjane Satrapi - Persepolis
Madeleine Miller - Circe & Song of Achilles*
I have realized what I especially like about them is that they span a long period of time (a significant period of one character’s life up until several generations of a family). In addition, I have gained knowledge about a culture and/or time period which is not US American**. At the same time, they are all very well written and the stories are enthralling - but of course that last point is more subjective.
Any recommendations to add to my summer reading list?
* I know this one is a bit the odd one out as the author is American and it could be called fantasy, but scratches the same itch where I got a lot of insight about Greek mythology while reading an amazing story.
** Nothing against US literature, by the way, I just read a lot of American books already and need less recommendations there.
That sounds very much like The Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann, and a lot of Olga Tokarczuk.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 4:52 AM on July 16, 2024
posted by I claim sanctuary at 4:52 AM on July 16, 2024
Arundati Roy - A Suitable Boy
Victor Hugo - Les Miserables
And potentially to a lesser extent...
William Thackeray - Vanity Fair
George Elliot - Middlemarch
Thomas Hardy - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo
posted by london explorer girl at 4:53 AM on July 16, 2024
Victor Hugo - Les Miserables
And potentially to a lesser extent...
William Thackeray - Vanity Fair
George Elliot - Middlemarch
Thomas Hardy - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo
posted by london explorer girl at 4:53 AM on July 16, 2024
The Mountains Sing, by Nguyên Phan Quê Mai. It’s about Vietnam and the Vietnam war, told across multiple generations of a family. The author is a poet as well as a novelist, and wrote this book in English so it’s not translated but her own lyrical, beautiful writing.
posted by alligatorpear at 5:13 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by alligatorpear at 5:13 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
Arundhati Roy, the god of small things.
A suitable boy is Vikram Seth.
posted by Iteki at 5:16 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
A suitable boy is Vikram Seth.
posted by Iteki at 5:16 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
Iteki - thanks! Of course it is :) I meant A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth!
posted by london explorer girl at 5:27 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by london explorer girl at 5:27 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
I just recommended these in another thread but they fit the criteria here. They are both Japanese.
A True Novel by Minae Mizumura
An intergenerational story of Japanese families which borrows a lot from Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Takes place across post WW2 Japan and the present day. Definitely epic in scope.
Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama
A police procedural (but also so much more!) set in modern day Japan. This was a huge hit in Japan and I know I learned so much about Japanese society from it. It is a large novel which moves very slowly but somehow maintains tension throughout.
posted by vacapinta at 5:43 AM on July 16, 2024 [2 favorites]
A True Novel by Minae Mizumura
An intergenerational story of Japanese families which borrows a lot from Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Takes place across post WW2 Japan and the present day. Definitely epic in scope.
Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama
A police procedural (but also so much more!) set in modern day Japan. This was a huge hit in Japan and I know I learned so much about Japanese society from it. It is a large novel which moves very slowly but somehow maintains tension throughout.
posted by vacapinta at 5:43 AM on July 16, 2024 [2 favorites]
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth is ABSOLUTELY epic and amazing and I highly recommend it, and its scope is vast and the cast of characters is in the dozens. But note that it all takes place over the course of a few years, not generations, in case the temporal duration is really important to you.
posted by brainwane at 5:53 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by brainwane at 5:53 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
Love this question and will definitely be following it for answers!!
Do double check the summaries of the following to make sure they fit, but they seemed appropriate to me:
The Pearl That Broke Its Shell - Nadia Hashimi
The Murmur of Bees - Sofia Segovia
Song of a Captive Bird - Jasmin Darznik
Praise Song for the Butterflies - Bernice McFadden (warning: BRUTAL)
The Far Field - Madhuri Vijay
Cantoras - Caro de Robertis
A Long Petal of the Sea - Isabel Allende
Four Treasures of the Sky - Jenny Tinghui Zhang (takes place largely in the US but focused on a Chinese girl who was smuggled from China)
(If you do find yourself needing a US-centric recommendation, I can't recommend strongly enough The Love Songs of WEB DuBois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, if you haven't read it)
posted by obfuscation at 6:09 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
Do double check the summaries of the following to make sure they fit, but they seemed appropriate to me:
The Pearl That Broke Its Shell - Nadia Hashimi
The Murmur of Bees - Sofia Segovia
Song of a Captive Bird - Jasmin Darznik
Praise Song for the Butterflies - Bernice McFadden (warning: BRUTAL)
The Far Field - Madhuri Vijay
Cantoras - Caro de Robertis
A Long Petal of the Sea - Isabel Allende
Four Treasures of the Sky - Jenny Tinghui Zhang (takes place largely in the US but focused on a Chinese girl who was smuggled from China)
(If you do find yourself needing a US-centric recommendation, I can't recommend strongly enough The Love Songs of WEB DuBois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, if you haven't read it)
posted by obfuscation at 6:09 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
Is One Hundred Years of Solitude maybe too obvious to mention? (If you've somehow never read it, I think it fits what you're looking for exactly.)
posted by nobody at 6:11 AM on July 16, 2024 [5 favorites]
posted by nobody at 6:11 AM on July 16, 2024 [5 favorites]
If you consider Annie Ernaux and Ditlevsen as fiction, I'll suggest Maggie O'Farrel's I Am, I Am, I Am, and Helen Garner's Monkey Grip.
And Knausgaard suggests you'll like Jon Fosse, maybe Trilogy or Septology.
posted by dobbs at 6:14 AM on July 16, 2024
And Knausgaard suggests you'll like Jon Fosse, maybe Trilogy or Septology.
posted by dobbs at 6:14 AM on July 16, 2024
The Covenant of Water - Abraham Verghese
posted by eleslie at 6:33 AM on July 16, 2024 [2 favorites]
posted by eleslie at 6:33 AM on July 16, 2024 [2 favorites]
A recent find that I, a very picky fiction reader, adored: "The Storm We Made" by Vanessa Chan.
Malaysian family weathers the Japanese occupation of WWII, complicated by Mom's interesting relationship, starting more than a decade before the war, with a key high-ranking Japanese resident.
The audiobook version is excellent and worth your time.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 6:36 AM on July 16, 2024
Malaysian family weathers the Japanese occupation of WWII, complicated by Mom's interesting relationship, starting more than a decade before the war, with a key high-ranking Japanese resident.
The audiobook version is excellent and worth your time.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 6:36 AM on July 16, 2024
I think you'd really like We, The Drowned by Carsten Jensen, which follows various characters in the Danish seafaring town of Marstal from 1848 until 1945. Gorgeously written narrative by a ghostly chorus which mixes adventure, war romance, coming-of-age, drama and comedy together.
posted by eternalhedgehog at 7:04 AM on July 16, 2024 [2 favorites]
posted by eternalhedgehog at 7:04 AM on July 16, 2024 [2 favorites]
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie might fit the bill.
Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan is a little bit of a stretch (some of the narrators are animals, but they're a reincarnated human, so maybe it counts) but I love it and I think very much fits your ask for learning about non-American culture and history. Also, it's funny.
posted by snaw at 7:53 AM on July 16, 2024 [2 favorites]
Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan is a little bit of a stretch (some of the narrators are animals, but they're a reincarnated human, so maybe it counts) but I love it and I think very much fits your ask for learning about non-American culture and history. Also, it's funny.
posted by snaw at 7:53 AM on July 16, 2024 [2 favorites]
Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time. Very much a period piece now but it follows its characters from school to later life through 12 (shortish) novels.
posted by crocomancer at 8:46 AM on July 16, 2024
posted by crocomancer at 8:46 AM on July 16, 2024
I was also going to recommend The Covenant of Water.
posted by number9dream at 8:56 AM on July 16, 2024
posted by number9dream at 8:56 AM on July 16, 2024
Olga Tokarczuk has been mentioned above: her The Books of Jacob is an epic narrative that spans several decades.
posted by misteraitch at 9:06 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by misteraitch at 9:06 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
I absolutely adored The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
posted by poppunkcat at 9:11 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by poppunkcat at 9:11 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
If you enjoyed Anna Karenina then Tolstoy's other great work is War and Peace. It's an absolute door stop of a book and you could make a good case for it being the novel which defines the term "epic" due to it's age, scope, and originality.
Not sure if it meets all of your criteria on the basis that it's not set in a defined time or country but the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake is certainly epic and beautifully written and definitely not American.
You might find it worthwhile to browse the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works. From the Wikipedia article on it:
"The project's purpose was to translate masterpieces of world literature, primarily from a lesser known language into a more international language such as English and French. As of 2005 there were 1060 works in the catalog representing over sixty-five different literatures and representing around fifty Asian languages, twenty European languages as well as a number of literatures and languages from Africa and Oceania."
posted by underclocked at 9:35 AM on July 16, 2024
Not sure if it meets all of your criteria on the basis that it's not set in a defined time or country but the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake is certainly epic and beautifully written and definitely not American.
You might find it worthwhile to browse the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works. From the Wikipedia article on it:
"The project's purpose was to translate masterpieces of world literature, primarily from a lesser known language into a more international language such as English and French. As of 2005 there were 1060 works in the catalog representing over sixty-five different literatures and representing around fifty Asian languages, twenty European languages as well as a number of literatures and languages from Africa and Oceania."
posted by underclocked at 9:35 AM on July 16, 2024
Loot by Tania James, not quite as epic as some of these but does cover a long time period and non-American and very interesting settings.
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright is Irish, multi-generation, lovely writing.
posted by ch1x0r at 10:30 AM on July 16, 2024
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright is Irish, multi-generation, lovely writing.
posted by ch1x0r at 10:30 AM on July 16, 2024
Is British OK? If so, then "Hopeful Monsters" by Nicholas Mosley
Non-English-language originals:
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami
posted by virve at 10:54 AM on July 16, 2024 [4 favorites]
Non-English-language originals:
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami
posted by virve at 10:54 AM on July 16, 2024 [4 favorites]
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The Fraud by Zadie Smith
Wind Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami
Wolf Hall etc by Hilary Mantel
posted by vunder at 2:23 PM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
The Fraud by Zadie Smith
Wind Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami
Wolf Hall etc by Hilary Mantel
posted by vunder at 2:23 PM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]
Ok so this *is* American, but if you're looking to learn about other cultures / perspectives Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon is great if you're not black. It's a Bildungsroman that focuses on the story of two generations and has a lot of historical context. I recommend!
posted by lianove3 at 3:10 PM on July 16, 2024
posted by lianove3 at 3:10 PM on July 16, 2024
Several people have recommended books I have read and enjoyed so I will mention one which quickly came to mind upon reading the question, and which I did not see mentioned already here: the Cairo trilogy by Maguib Mahfouz.
Mahfouz won the nobel prize for literature in the 80s and this trilogy is a big reason for it, but it was written in the 1950s and is set broadly in the 1910s-1940s timeframe in a certain city in Egypt. It follows the story of a middle class family, a self-indulgent overbearing father, his imposed-upon wife, five imposed-upon children, some of the in-laws/social acquaintances/business associates. To the extent that the story is from the point of view of a particular character*, it's from the point of view of the youngest son who is under the age of ten at the beginning of the story and is an adult with (less gainful than he would like) employment at the time of the last sentence, leaving a store where he and one of his brother have purchased a tie for a funeral. My hazy recollection is that the author was explicitly inspired to some extent by Proust and by Henri Bergson's thoughts on time, which I take as something you may possibly want.
It was written with the intention of being one big solid book, but the publishers were worried about sales or something, and it was structured in such a way that it could be divided into three separate volumes, so it was originally published that way. You currently can get it as one big volume, or as three separate books, Palace Walk (Bayn al-Qasreyn), Palace of Desire (Qasr al-Shawq), and Sugar Street (al-Sukkariyya), each volume named after a salient Cairene street.
posted by Whale Oil at 5:12 PM on July 16, 2024 [2 favorites]
Mahfouz won the nobel prize for literature in the 80s and this trilogy is a big reason for it, but it was written in the 1950s and is set broadly in the 1910s-1940s timeframe in a certain city in Egypt. It follows the story of a middle class family, a self-indulgent overbearing father, his imposed-upon wife, five imposed-upon children, some of the in-laws/social acquaintances/business associates. To the extent that the story is from the point of view of a particular character*, it's from the point of view of the youngest son who is under the age of ten at the beginning of the story and is an adult with (less gainful than he would like) employment at the time of the last sentence, leaving a store where he and one of his brother have purchased a tie for a funeral. My hazy recollection is that the author was explicitly inspired to some extent by Proust and by Henri Bergson's thoughts on time, which I take as something you may possibly want.
It was written with the intention of being one big solid book, but the publishers were worried about sales or something, and it was structured in such a way that it could be divided into three separate volumes, so it was originally published that way. You currently can get it as one big volume, or as three separate books, Palace Walk (Bayn al-Qasreyn), Palace of Desire (Qasr al-Shawq), and Sugar Street (al-Sukkariyya), each volume named after a salient Cairene street.
posted by Whale Oil at 5:12 PM on July 16, 2024 [2 favorites]
She Who Became the Sun & He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan: slightly fantastical, very queer reimagining of the founding of the Ming Dynasty. Australian author.
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell: multi generational, multi family, but if magic realism, from Zambia.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi: multigenerational family epic about the descendents of two sisters separated by transatlantic slavery. Ghanaian-American author.
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng: historical fiction set in colonial Malaysia.
posted by carolr at 6:53 PM on July 16, 2024
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell: multi generational, multi family, but if magic realism, from Zambia.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi: multigenerational family epic about the descendents of two sisters separated by transatlantic slavery. Ghanaian-American author.
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng: historical fiction set in colonial Malaysia.
posted by carolr at 6:53 PM on July 16, 2024
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Set in India during the Emergency in the 1970s - sweeping narrative across people from different backgrounds/socioeconomic levels. I really felt like I was there reading it - a wonderful book.
posted by jilloftrades at 5:45 AM on July 18, 2024 [1 favorite]
Set in India during the Emergency in the 1970s - sweeping narrative across people from different backgrounds/socioeconomic levels. I really felt like I was there reading it - a wonderful book.
posted by jilloftrades at 5:45 AM on July 18, 2024 [1 favorite]
Texaco by Chamoiseau, Omeros by Derek Walcott, Manzoni's The Betrothed, Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard, Heinrich Böll's The Clown and Billiards at Half Past Nine, Don Quixote, Rabelais.
posted by diodotos at 4:00 PM on July 19, 2024
posted by diodotos at 4:00 PM on July 19, 2024
If you want to dip your toe into Australian literary fiction the two most epic novels I've read in that genre are Cloudstreet by Tim Winton and The Great World by David Malouf.
posted by shimmerbug at 6:06 PM on August 11, 2024
posted by shimmerbug at 6:06 PM on August 11, 2024
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If you don't mind going in fantasy, I really enjoy Guy Gavriel Kay's novels set in alternative time : The Sarantine Mosaic in 6th century Spain-Italy region ; Under Heaven in 12th century China
I'll be following this to add to my own list (read and liked most of your list! will try Circe now)
posted by domi_p at 4:24 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]