Popular European Cultural Books
Find cultural books written by authors from Europe for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (46)
1.
A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov EN
RussiaDescription:
A masterpiece of Russian prose, Lermontov's only novel was influential for many later 19th century authors, including Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov. Lermotov's hero, Pechorin, is a dangerous man, Byronic in his wasted gifts and his cynicism, and desperate for any kind of action that will stave off boredom. In five linked episodes, Lermontov builds up a portrait of a man caught in and expressing the sickness of his times.
France3.
All This Belongs to Me by Petra Hulova, Alex Zucker EN
Country: Europe / 
Czech Republic
Czech Republic
Description:
"Alta, Zaya, Nara, Oyuna and Dolgorna - a mother, three sisters, and the teenage daughter of one of the sisters - each tell their pieces of the family story, an epic fraught with secrets and betrayals, in All This Belongs to Me, the debut novel of Petra Hulova." "All This Belongs to Me transports the reader from Mongolia's harsh, dusty steppe to the clamor and grime of the capital, Ulaanbantar; from nomanic herding and felt tents to brothels and prefab apartment blocks. With a filmic eye and a dead-on ear, Hulova vividly conveys the landscapes and lives of three generations of women. Two of th... continue
Greece5.
Description:
To make this quintessential Greek drama more accessible to the modern reader, this Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition? includes a glossary of difficult terms, a list of vocabulary words, and convenient sidebar notes. By providing these, it is our intention that readers will more fully enjoy the beauty, wisdom, and intent of the play.The curse placed on Oedipus lingers and haunts a younger generation in this new and brilliant translation of Sophocles? classic drama. The daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, Antigone is an unconventional heroine who pits her beliefs against the King of Thebe... continue
6.
Babette's Feast by Karen Blixen EN
DenmarkDescription:
These five rich, witty and magical stories from the author of Out of Africa include one of her most well known tales, ‘Babette’s Feast’, which was made into the classic film. It tells the story of a French cook working in a puritanical Norwegian community, who treats her employers to the decadent feast of a lifetime. There is also a real-life Prospero and his Ariel in ‘Tempests’, a mysterious pearl-fisher in ‘The Diver’ and a brief, tragic encounter in ‘The Ring’. All the stories have a mystic, fairy-tale quality, linked by themes of angels, the sea, dreams and fate. They were among the last t... continue
7.
Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenit︠s︡yn EN
Description:
One of the great allegorical masterpieces of world literature, Cancer Ward is both a deeply compassionate study of people facing terminal illness and a brilliant dissection of the "cancerous" Soviet police state.
8.
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol EN
UkraineDescription:
One of the most unusual works of nineteenth-century fiction and a devastating satire on social hypocrisy Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in a provincial town and visits a succession of landowners to make each a strange offer. He proposes to buy the names of dead serfs still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them, and to use these “souls” as collateral to reinvent himself as a gentleman. In this ebullient masterpiece, Gogol created a grotesque gallery of human types, from the bear-like Sobakevich to the insubstantial fool Manilov, and, above all, the dev... continue
9.
Depeche Mode by Serhiy Zhadan EN
Description:
In 1993, tragic turbulence takes over Ukraine in the post-communist spin-off. As if in somnambulism, Soviet war veterans and upstart businessmen listen to an American preacher of whose type there were plenty at the time in the post-Soviet territory. In Kharkiv, the young communist headquarters is now an advertising agency, and a youth radio station brings Western music, with Depeche Mode in the lead, into homes of ordinary people. In the middle of this craze three friends, an anti-Semitic Jew Dogg Pavlov, an unfortunate entrepreneur Vasia the Communist and the narrator Zhadan, nineteen years o... continue
10.
Der blinde Masseur : Roman by Catalin Dorian Florescu DE
RomaniaDescription:
a philosophical book about a man returning from Switzerland to his home country Romania. A book about lies, trust, love and friendship set in the early 2000s.