Popular European Cultural Books
Find cultural books written by authors from Europe for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (47)
31.
Pleasantview by Celeste Mohammed EN
Country: Europe / 
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Description:
Coconut trees. Carnival. Rum and coke. To many outsiders, these and other sunny images are all they know about life in the Caribbean. However, if you want to learn how the locals truly live and experience the dark and often harrowing truths that lurk behind the idyllic imagery of Caribbean culture, then come visit the town of Pleasantview. Come during election season, and see how one candidate sets out to slaughter endangered turtles - just for fun. Or come on the day the other candidate beats his "outside-woman," so badly she ends up losing their baby. Then come on the night of the political ... continue
32.
Seven Hanged by Leonid Andreyev EN
RussiaDescription:
'It was like walking along the knife-edge of the highest possible mountain range, seeing life on one side and death on the other in the form of two deep, gorgeous and gleaming seascapes.' This astonishing novella from 1908, newly translated for Little Black Classics by War and Peace translator Anthony Briggs, probes the emotions and experiences of seven people condemned to death in Tsarist Russia. A powerful and subtle exploration of the morality of capital punishment, it was a bestseller at the time, and, in a strange quirk of history, influenced the conspirators in the cataclysmic assassinat... continue
33.
Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg EN
DenmarkDescription:
She thinks more highly of snow and ice than she does of love. She lives in a world of numbers, science and memories--a dark, exotic stranger in a strange land. And now Smilla Jaspersen is convinced she has uncovered a shattering crime... It happened in the Copenhagen snow. A six-year-old boy, a Greenlander like Smilla, fell to his death from the top of his apartment building. While the boy's body is still warm, the police pronounce his death an accident. But Smilla knows her young neighbor didn't fall from the roof on his own. Soon she is following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps ... continue
34.
Strait is the Gate by André Gide EN
FranceDescription:
Jerome Palissier, a delicate boy, spends many summers at his uncle's house in Normandy, where the whole world seems steeped in azure. There he falls deeply in love with his cousin Alissa and she with him. But gradually Alissa becomes convinced that Jerome's love for her is endangering his soul.
Belgium36.
The Appointment : A Novel by Katharina Volckmer EN
GermanyDescription:
“A darkly funny untangling of national and sexual identity.” —The Guardian * “Transgressive...Incendiary.” —The New Yorker * “A furious comic monologue...with a disregard for propriety worthy of Alexander Portnoy.” —The New York Times Book Review * “Sexy, hilarious, and subversive.” —The Paris Review For readers of Ottessa Moshfegh and Han Kang, a whip-smart debut novel in which a woman on the verge of major change addresses her doctor in a stream of consciousness narrative. In a well-appointed examination in London, a young woman unburdens herself to a certain Dr. Seligman. Though she can bar... continue
37.
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting : A Novel by Milan Kundera EN
Country: Europe / 
Czech Republic
Czech Republic
Description:
Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.
38.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare EN
Country: Europe / 
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
Description:
Hamlet. Romeo and Juliet. Henry V. Macbeth. A Midsummer Night's Dream. King Lear. Lovers of literature will immediately recognise these as signature works of William Shakespeare, whose plays still rank as the greatest dramas ever produced in the English language four centuries after they were written. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare collects all thirty-seven of the immortal Bard's comedies, tragedies, and historical plays in a beautiful edition. This volume also features Shakespeare's complete poetry, including the sonnets. With this beautiful edition, you can enjoy Shakespeare's end... continue
39.
The Convert by Stefan Hertmans EN
Description:
Finalist for the 2020 National Jewish Book Awards In this dazzling work of historical fiction, the Man Booker International–long-listed author of War and Turpentine reconstructs the tragic story of a medieval noblewoman who leaves her home and family for the love of a Jewish boy. In eleventh-century France, Vigdis Adelaïs, a young woman from a prosperous Christian family, falls in love with David Todros, a rabbi’s son and yeshiva student. To be together, the couple must flee their city, and Vigdis must renounce her life of privilege and comfort. Pursued by her father’s knights and in constant ... continue
40.
The Fugitives by Jamal Mahjoub EN
Country: Europe / United Kingdom
United Kingdom
Description:
Moving from Khartoum, Sudan, to Washington, D.C., and then across the US in a road trip unlike any other, this is a book about music, friendship and the desire for home