A Classic from a foreign language

Journey to the West? You mean Monkey?

Heinrich Boll - The Bread of Those Early Years. Excellent, but the English translation misses some out at the end.

Not Memoirs of a Geisha - the author deliberately falsified and exoticises the culture and profession, and put the woman he interviewed life as risk with his lies and putting her name everywhere after he told her she would remain nameless. Mineko Iwasaki wrote her own book, "Geisha, A Life" which is a far better read in every way.

Alexandre Dumas is good, there is a new book coming out soon or recently came out called the Black Count discussing how much of what he wrote about was about his father.

If you can find good translations (always check reviews for this), the Chinese "great classics", particularly Journey to the West, are a worthwhile real. Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Dream of the Red Chamber are the other 3 (there is a 5th one, but quite hard to get and banned a lot of the time due to it's highly sexual content).

My current mission is the African classics here is a respected list if anyone else is interested.

Answered my own question; the Zola book is La Bête Humaine

What's the Zola one about the train driver having an affair? (If I've remembered correctly!) that one is great!

My favourite Nabokov is Pale Fire... Possibly the most confusingly brilliant book I've ever read.

Completely agree about nemirovsky. Amazing woman and writer.

Aunt Julia and the scriptwriter! I loved it!

Buddenbrooks is great
or Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is a bit more modern
Also second Germinale, although pretty grim stuff.

I've just dipped in to Count of Monte Cristo over Christmas, as I had a memory of watching the Gerard Depardieu dramatization about ten years Xmas time ago, but perhaps it is more a teenage sort of book, very melodramatic and religious.... Still exciting, but just so much padding.

Ah - was going to suggest Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary!

Have you read Crime & Punishment? I LOVED it , good story, strong characters and thought provoking.

Another vote for Germinal here. One of my all time favourite books. I also love Tin Drum by Gunter Grass. Wierd, but good!

Gabriel Garcial Marquez - a hunddred years of solitude,or Love in the time of Cholera.

Isabel Allende - house of the Spirits.

(all ones I've read in spanish! Better in orig language but still stinking in English!)

Isabel Allende's 'Paula' - gosh I love that book and if you like Marquez you'll probably like her others as well (i find them a bit wearing but Paula is exquisite)
Yes to Kafka, especially The Castle and The Trial
Yes to Lolita - one of my favourite books ever
Not at all meaty but 'The Little Prince' is lovely and also Camus' The Outsider

Oh yes, Voltaire. Candide is wonderful, eccentric and thought-provoking.

That reminds me. Wild Swans is a good read, as is Memoirs of a Geisha.

Would you be interested in some Japanese 20th century classics? The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanazaki, and Kokoro by Natsume Soseki are among the more approachable ones.

Do you like crime fiction? I loved the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson. Marcel Pagnol is wonderful and anything by Jo Nesbo. Alain Fournier? Voltaire? A second vote for Balzac. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas?

Not sure where i've got this idea you want to use Kindle - maybe mixing up a another thread? If so, sorry - have reread this thread andam none the wiser see Germinal gets a mention already. Other things by Zola also good.

Away back in the 198os i did a dissertation on Theodor Fontane, and see Effi Briest in Englsh is available on Kindle as well as paper. A kind of timeless tale IMO. Little known outside Germany.

If you want paper copies and live near a Bookworld you might get some translated classics there quite cheaply.

If you liked Madame Bovary, then you might like Balzac - Eugenie Grandet, for example. Also you might find some Zola on Kindle. Not sure about other ideas for Kindle as I'm a 20th century gal myself. I'll ber Lolita is on Kindle and maybe others by Nabokov.

Stefan Zweig has now been translated into English - not sure of title - but life in Vienna between world wars.

Ah yes, Suite Francaise is glorious and harrowing all at once.

Oh, I love everything that Irene Nemirovsky wrote.

I can recommend anything by Josef Skvorecky - The Miracle Game is a great read.

Or Alexander Solzenitsyn - loved One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Or JM Coetzee?

Yes, Dangerous Liaisons is good.

In the last year I've read both Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada and Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky (covering the same period) and thought both were excellent, but particularly Alone in Berlin.

I read Zola's Germinal last year and really enjoyed it. I like Victorian literature anyway, and this gave a European slant on the workers' experience of backbreaking work and grinding poverty .. OK it's not sounding like a cheerful read but it's a powerful novel and one that has stayed with me since I read it .. And you said you wanted something meaty!

Smilla is superb. I also love crime and punishment and any Kafka. Orhan pamuk's Snow is stunning - political and romantic. Chekhov's short story collections are good to delve into as well.

Another vote for 'Les Miserables' & 'Dangerous Liaisons', 'Miss Smillas feeling for snow' and 'The Joke'. Also 'Wild Swans' if you've not already read it.

My brother used to like 'The Little World of Don Camillo' which I've always meant to read.