trying to find well-written challenging fiction that isn't widely known

[highlandcoo]

I have a very well-read young friend, who lives abroad, and traditionally I always send her books on her birthday.
It's getting harder and harder to find something she hasn't read, but sending her a book token just wouldn't be the same.
She has read many of the classics, as well as a huge amount of contemporary literary fiction. I know ahe has enjoyed Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Zola, Gunter Grass, Herman Hesse, Murakami, Paul Auster, David Mitchell ...
I wondered about books in translation that she's less likely to have come across. Open to any suggestions though.
TIA

If you and she like magical realism...

If On a Winter's Night A Traveller, Italo Calvino, or actually any Calvino.

The Last Flight of the Flamingo, Mia Couto

Making Love, Marcus Brill

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke

The African Writers' Series might offer some ideas and take you off the beaten track. Some names you'll recognise there, many not. I like Dambudzo Marechara and Musaemura Zimunya.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Writers_Series

André Brink is another African writer, and Coetzee's already been mentioned.

VS Naipul from Trinidad.

Virago Modern Classics might be another imprint to check out.
wiki.librarything.com/index.php/User:Christiguc

Prompted by the mention of Tim Pears... Iain Pears' An Instance of the Fingerpost. Wonderful C17th mystery set in the aftermath of the English Civil War, depicting the emergence of the modern scientific method and the work of Bacon – and shamelessly poaching William Harvey's laurels.

His modern detective series with an art historian is much less meaty. I enjoyed them, but they're not in the same class as An Instance.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. She's an International Man Booker prize winner so should tick your boxes.

@madamehooch

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. She's an International Man Booker prize winner so should tick your boxes.

She's also got the Nobel prize for literature.

Hopscotch by Julio cortazar

@Frogsonglue

Are they an English ex-pat? Not that this really matters, but if so they might enjoy something that casts England in an interesting and timeless light. I absolutely love Tim Pears' books, he paints rural England in a really beautiful but slightly disturbing way, and he's a wonderful storyteller. "In the place of fallen leaves" is brilliant, so is the Horseman trilogy.

Frogs she grew up in Scotland, is of Pakistani heritage but now working in Lithuania. You've reminded me that I haven't read Tim Pearce for ages, thanks.

Thank you all, again. Lesser-known African writers could be a good call. Also South American. I think she's pretty well acquainted with literature from the Indian subcontinent, which is also an interest of mine.

Basically, anything I've heard of she is likely to have read, hence asking for help on here!

I now have a great list of ideas for Christmas and next year's birthday

I treated myself to membership of the Unbound book club recently. You get one of their titles each month as an ebook plus a few other perks. Their range is very varied and you're supporting developing writers.

In that case, more names I'd pick out from the AWS are:
Nadine Gordimer
Yvonne Vera
Chenjerai Hove

Of the last two I've only read their poetry, but their novels are highly respected.

Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country is of course seminal, but she might not have come across it.

Dorothy Dunnett Lymond chronicles are an excellent read, start with Game of Kings

I don't have an answer for you, but I'm intrigued that you specified "challenging."

John Cowper Powys. Challenging. Absolutely brilliant. Almost forgotten.

Willa Cather is an author who is often unfairly overlooked I feel. My Antonia is a wonderful book.

I don't have an answer for you, but I'm intrigued that you specified "challenging."

So am I. What do you mean by challenging? Shakespeare? Chaucer? Tolstoy, specifically War and Peace?

@MsAmerica

I don't have an answer for you, but I'm intrigued that you specified "challenging."

I just assumed literary fiction rather than genre.

So ... "challenging" .. this young friend only likes books that I would probably describe as not an easy read. A book that you need to really think about, which would exclude all "chick-lit", most crime and thrillers, easy historical fiction etc. She likes a theme or a narrative that she has to wrestle with if that makes sense? Often with a historical/political/social slant. She's a serious-minded person!

For example, in recent years I have sent her Nostromo by Conrad, Disgrace by Coetzee, High Rise by Ballard, Cosmos by Gombrowicz, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, The Doll by Pruz, The Fictions of Bruno Schulz and other similarly (what I would consider to be) obscure titles.

I guess what's regarded as "challenging" varies from person to person though.

@madamehooch

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. She's an International Man Booker prize winner so should tick your boxes.

And her novel Flights, which is astonishing.

In translation, I’ve recently loved Magda Szabo’s The Door and Abigail (Hungarian). How well-read is she likely to be in Irish fiction? I would recommend anything by Anne Enright, Kevin Barry, John McGahern, Edna O’Brien, Colm Toibin, William Trevor, Elizabeth Bowen (short stories as well as novels in all cases) — more immediately contemporary recommendations: Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones, Claire-Louise Bennett’s Pond, Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing or The Lesser Bohemians, Sara Baume’sSpill Simmer Falter Wither, Belinda McKeown’s Solace, Mary Costello’s The China Factory, Elaine Feeney’s As You Were, Rob Boyle’s Threshold.

Carol Birch's novels are very different, and have some unusual themes. Try Jamrach's Menagerie, or Orphans Of The Carnival.

Agree with the suggestion of Laxness above - Independent People is a wonderful book. Probably too well known, but the book that's made the biggest impression on me recently is Haweswater. Another one I often recommend which is (I think) a beautifully written little book but not well known is The Short Day Dying by Peter Hobbs, about a lay preacher in Victorian Cornwall. He also wrote another called In the Orchard The Swallows, which is set in Pakistan, so may be of interest if not already read?

Was coming on to suggest looking at Persephone’s booklist but I’ve been beaten to it.
The Mint Lawn by Gillian Mears, Australian author.
Alice Munro short stories
Elena Ferrante
Angela Carter

There's some amazing SF out there at the moment, & if it's not a genre she usually reads it might tick your boxes for something she's unlikely to have read. The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu recommended above is an excellent read (though if she does read SF it's very widely known & popular).

But given your criteria of "a theme or a narrative that she has to wrestle with" I'd suggest Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer. It's set in a 25th century where ultra-rapid transport has made geography pretty much irrelevant, and people belong to 'Hives' based on differing value structures, each with their own city-states and laws that adherents and visitors must follow (there are also 'white-laws' who follow all laws, and 'black-laws' who are essentially anarchists whose territories have only a pared down socially agreed minimum of law. It's full of references to the Enlightenment, discussions of philosophy, religion & history & how people get & keep power. Definitely not an easy read, but very rewarding.

Would any of these suit?

Fugitive Pieces - Anne Michaels
A Hero of Our Time - Lermontov
Le Testament Francais - Andrei Makine
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Night and Day - Virginia Wolf
Ann Veronica - H.G Wells
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene
By Grand Central Station I Lay Down and Wept - Elizabeth Smart
A Journal of the Plague Year - Daniel Defoe
Reflections in a Golden Eye - Carson McCullers
Rhine Journey - Ann Schlee

All great books

Potentially some of the 'New Stories from the Mabinogion' series - Welsh authors doing a contemporary take on some of the ancient ones and coordinated by Cardiff's School of Welsh. Possibly a good modern 'translation' of the Mabonogion too. Some of that series are great - White Ravens is one of my favourite novellas ever.