Read Around Europe Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Europe.
Best books from Europe (2781)
271.
Natural Novel by Georgi Gospodinov EN
BulgariaDescription:
Resembling the complex and fragmented way a fly's eye works, Natural Novel contains a myriad of storylines, reflections, and digressions, including a history of toilets and the graffiti found there, a meditation on the relationship between bees and language, and an attempt to write a book using only verbs. Incredibly funny at times, this novel is driven by the narrator's need to come to terms with his dissolving marriage and his wife's infidelity with their close friend. Gospodinov's first novel is both broad in scope and intensely personal, illustrating the impossibility of presenting life tr... continue
272.
Border : A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova EN
Description:
Kapka Kassabova returns to Bulgaria, from where she emigrated as a girl twenty-five years previously, to explore the border it shares with Turkey and Greece. When she was a child, the border zone was rumored to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall, and it swarmed with soldiers and spies
273.
Stork Mountain : A Novel by Miroslav Penkov EN
Description:
"A young Bulgarian immigrant returns to the country of his birth in search of his grandfather, who suddenly and unexpectedly cut all contact with the family three years ago. The trail leads him to a village on the border with Turkey, a stone's throw away from Greece, high up in the Strandja Mountains--a place of pagan mysteries and black storks nesting in giant oaks; a place where every spring, possessed by Christian saints, men and women dance barefoot across live coals in search of rebirth. Here in the mountains, he gets drawn by his grandfather into a maze of half-truths"--Amazon.com.
274.
The Collector of Worlds by Ilija Trojanow EN
Description:
A stunning fictionalized account of the infamous life of british colonial officer and translator sir richard francis burton A nineteenth-century British colonial officer with a rare ability to assim-ilate into indigenous cultures, Sir Richard Francis Burton was an obses-sive traveler whose journeys took him from England to British India, Arabia, and on a quest for the source of the Nile River in Africa. He learned more than twenty languages, translated The Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra, and took part in the pilgrimage to Mecca, in addition to writing several travel books. This elegant nove... continue
275.
Time Shelter : A Novel by Georgi Gospodinov EN
Description:
An award-winning international sensation—with a second-act dystopian twist—Time Shelter is a tour de force set in a world clamoring for the past before it forgets. “At one point they tried to calculate when time began, when exactly the earth had been created,” begins Time Shelter’s enigmatic narrator, who will go unnamed. “In the mid–seventeenth century, the Irish bishop Ussher calculated not only the exact year, but also a starting date: October 22, 4,004 years before Christ.” But for our narrator, time as he knows it begins when he meets Gaustine, a “vagrant in time” who has distanced his li... continue
276.
Novela natural by Gueorgui Gospodinov ES
Description:
Un editor recibe, como tantas veces, un sobre con material para ser publicado, aunque sin los datos del remitente; luego de diferir su lectura un tiempo, cuando finalmente la lee se queda admirado e inicia la búsqueda de su autor misterioso. Se puede adelantar que el buscado es un tal Georgi (o Gueorgui) Gospodinov.
En el camino habrá una silla mecedora, un divorcio, amagues de escribir una novela con los comienzos de novelas clásicas, y muchas plantas, como en una Historia natural del siglo XIX.
Y en el centro una novela escrita de manera natural, incluyendo cuotas de h... continue
277.
La estratagema by Léa Cohen ES
Description:
"R?stica con solapas La ca?da del Tel?n de Acero cambiar? muchas cosas en Bulgaria, saldr?n a la luz secretos ocultos durante d?cadas, y los exiliados podr?n regresar a su pa?s y reencontrarse con aquellos de quienes se vieron obligados a separarse. Uno de esos reencuentros lleva a Eva Mar?nova, una periodista de Sof?a, a viajar a Nueva York siguiendo la pista de su pasado. All? ir? desentra?ando la historia de cuatro familias b?lgaras cuyo destino qued? truncado por las leyes antisemitas del zar Bor?s III y por el r?gimen autoritario que se impuso tras la segunda guerra mundial. En los a?os t... continue
278.
El mundo es grande y la salvación acecha por todas partes by Ilija Trojanow ES
Description:
Ilija Trojanow, que es búlgaro pero escribe en alemán, es todavía para nuestros lectores un completo desconocido, aunque, sin duda, pronto los fascinará como lo hizo ya en Alemania y allí donde ha sido traducido. Pese a su juventud, su vida es casi tan prolija y azarosa como el título de su primera novela, El mundo es grande y la salvación acecha por todas partes, y su irrupción en la literatura alemana fue tan sorprendente como las historias que en ella aparecen. Pocos narradores contemporáneos en lengua alemana muestran semejante... continue
279.
Yo Sigo Contando Los Días by Georgi Bardarov ES
Description:
This novel is based on a true story, the love between a Christian man and a Muslim woman in the midst of the horror of the Bosnian war and the longest blockade in the history of humanity of a city: that of Sarajevo ́s. The two protagonists, Bosko Brkic and Admira Ismic, are known as the "Romeo and Juliet of Sarajevo". The novel recounts the last hours of their attempt to escape from besieged Sarajevo, on May 19, 1993, while in this context a retrospective is made, both of their relationship, and of the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the senselessness of the war.
280.
A Ballad for Georg Henig by Viktor Paskov EN
Description:
The poignant story of an elderly, impoverished violin maker, a master craftsman who refuses to trim his values for the modern age, as seen through the eyes of his young prot�g�. A best-seller in Bulgaria, this is one of Paskow's major works.