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What about Eastern Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, the former Balkans, the Baltics, Ukraine, and further toward Asia even...anyone explored that? It just struck me there is almost nothing I can think of whereas there is lots of Poles, Czechs, Hunagarians, the odd Romanian -- *big gap* --- Russians.
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 2 October 2010 20:46 (thirteen years ago) link
Stuff from the big pile of Harvills in our flat which I enjoyed:
Gustav Herling (Poland): The Island
Milos Tsernianski (Serbia): Migrations
Slobodan Selenic (Serbia, born Croatia): Premeditated Murder (btw I was much less keen on his "Father and Forefathers)
Stuff from the big pile of Harvills which remain to be read but which I am assured are very fine:
Ivo Andric (Bosnia): Bosnian Chronicle
Jaan Kross (Estonia): The Czar's Madman
If you're including Albania you can count all of those Kadare novels (I think my favourite is "The Pyramid" actually, but I'm a sucker for a project management novel).
If you're being otherwise generous in definition, there's Aleksandar Hemon, a Bosnian (I think) now based in Chicago and writing brilliantly in English.
I have no idea whether all or any of the above count as "classics" obv.
― Tim, Monday, 4 October 2010 10:31 (thirteen years ago) link
Great. Ivo Andric is all I've heard of (he won the Nobel).
A project management novel sounds irresistible. Off I go to meet my milestones!
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 4 October 2010 20:55 (thirteen years ago) link
one month passes...
I just read "Bosnian Chronicle", inspired by this thread. It's tremendous, although I found it very slow going. It's about Bosnia, but you only really see Bosnia around the edges of the main plot, which centres on the French (and to an extent Austrian) consulate in Travnik during the Napoleonic wars.
It doesn't sound very nice there, then.
― Tim, Wednesday, 10 November 2010 10:30 (thirteen years ago) link
So writing about what he knows then? Andric was an ambassador.
I've read so much about the moment of decline of the Austro-Hungarian empire that I haven't got round to actually reading that much about its heyday.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 11 November 2010 21:21 (thirteen years ago) link
ten years pass...