August ClassicsCAT: Classics in Translation

A huge topic with numerous possibilities! Being an English speaker, I'm concentrating on books translated into English, but any translated book qualifies.

Translated Classics for the August GeoCAT

The Palace Walk trilogy and Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz Egypt
Ali and Nino by Kurban Said Azerbaijan
Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali Turkey

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos France
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas France
The House of Ulloa by Emilia Pardo Bazan Portugal
The Crime of Father Amaro by Jose Maria Eca de Queiros Spain
The Story of Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerlof Sweden

Twentieth Century

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust France
Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg Italy
Independent People by Haldor Laxness Iceland
The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki Japan
The Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo Italy
The Radetsky March by Joseph Roth Austria
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann Germany
The Novel of Ferrara by Giorgio Bassani Italy
The Man Who Walked Through Walls by Marcel Ayme France

Crime Classics

The Sergeant Studer series by Friedrich Glauser Switzerland
detective Kindaichi Mysteries by Seishi Yokomizo Japan
Maigret by Georges Simenon

This is just a selection from my own library, and there are many more! Looking forward to seeing everyone's suggestions.

Here is the Wiki.

I'm continuing with the third book in The Novel of Ferrara, The Garden of the Finzi Continis and am also thinking of The Chinaman by Friedrich Glauser.

I will be reading Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan.

Thank you, Pam, for a great selection for those of us who don't make it a point to read in translation. I can second The Radetzky March and its follow up, The Emperor's Tomb.

Not sure yet what I will be reading, but I wanted to start the series you had mentioned previously by Bassani, but also have the Mann book on my shelf.

I've got volume 2 of The Decameron but I may get to that in july. Otherwise, there's a books of Euripides plays to be getting on with.

August promises to be a busy month so I'm not sure I'll get to it, but I have a trio of books by Naguib Mahfouz in my TBR so I might try to get to one of them. .

I am hoping to read a Japanese folk tale entitled The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter by Yasunari Kawabata, translated by Donald Keene.

>1 pamelad: dangerous liasons has to be one of my fav translated books. read it after seeing the movie and realized how much more it was.

thinking of reading Ali and Nino; its a time period Im familar with but a place I really am not but interested in learning more

I hope to read Love and Youth: Essential Stories by Ivan Turgenev, translated from the Russian by Nicolas Pasternak Slater and Maya Slater, in a lovely little Pushkin Press paperback I picked up last year. The collection includes 6 stories: "First Love" is from 1860 and the other 5 stories were published in 1852.

I'm thinking of The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore, the first non Western Nobel Literature Prize winner (in 1913). It was translated into English from Bengali by the author's son, Surendranath Tagore.

I am considering a Maigret novel, of which I have many!

ETA I might also read a classic book for children that originally was written in a different language and then translated into English. I have a lovely copy of Beauty and the Beast and that was originally written in French.

The Man Who Walked through Walls looks fun.

I completed The Garden of Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani 2.5*

>13 Tess_W: Same, same. I've read The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and have started the next book in The Novel of Ferrara, Behind the Door.

>12 cindydavid4: That does look fun - added to my to read list.

>12 cindydavid4: I've got that on the shelf. I've probably said several times "must get to it". Maybe this month...

I read Beauty and the Beast which was retold by Deborah Apy, with beautiful illustrations by Michael Hague. The original story was written by Madame le Prince de Beaumont.

Last night I read Thomas Mann's novella, Tonio Kröger, translated by David Luke, one of the other stories in Death in Venice and Other Stories. This is another story in which Mann discusses the meaning of art, in this case literature. Tonio is a writer who loves two people, a boy and then a girl, during his teenage years, who do not return his love. He never forms much of a relationship with anyone else until possibly at the end of the story, around the time he goes north to Denmark to write (which he does not do).

I finished Volume 2 of The Decameron, which fits for this month.

I read Ivan Turgenev's First Love (1860), translated from the Russian.

I have finished two novels by Nikolai Leskov: Alte Zeiten and "Ein absterbendes Geschlecht", contained in a single volume. The first was a bit disjointed, the second looks at the life of a princess through the eyes of her granddaugter. This was quite interesting: she is widowed in 1812, manages to keep the estate in order, gathers some unusual friends around her and at the end marries her daughter. She is very much an old-school Russian aristocrat, and we witness the changes taking place in Russian society.

I have also finished Die sieben Geschichten der sieben Prinzessinnen, translated from 12th century Persian. A shah has seven wives from seven countries, and each tells him a story when he visits her in her palace. One of them is the tale of Turandot.

I finished Love and Youth: Essential Stories by Ivan Turgenev, translated from the Russian by Nicolas Pasternak Slater and Maya Slater, published by Pushkin Press. This collection includes 6 stories: "First Love" is from 1860 and the other 5 stories were originally published in 1852.

Like most short story collections, some were better than others. The best was the first (and longest), "First Love", which is about the adoring love of a teenage boy for a slightly older woman. Turgenev completely captures that young devoted first-love feeling. I especially enjoyed the way Turgenev slowly lets us in on what is happening behind the scenes, but the young lover is completely oblivious to reality until the very end. Of the rest of the stories, "The District Doctor" was my second favorite, about a doctor who falls in love with his dying patient, even as he tries to remain calm, objective and encouraging. I thought these 2 stories were excellent and the other 4 stories just OK.

>23 kac522: Just wanted to add that I love the Pushkin Press edition that I read. They have a whole line of classics (mostly short stories and novellas) in this smaller, easy to hold-and-read format, and many are in translation. More books to drool over here: https://pushkinpress.com/our-books/?genre=classics#books

I have read The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter by Yasunari Kawabata. This is a updated version of the original which first published in the early 10th century AD. The tale was translated by Donald Keene.

September thread, Nonfiction classics, is up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/353006

Just finished Candide by Voltaire.

An incisive satire. There are horrific and fantastical sections but often a modern parallel comes to mind making this work as relevant today as when it was published in 1759. I have to admit I was more impressed the first time I read it about 50 years ago.

My update is quite late! For this challenge, I finished In Diamond Square, a Catalan classic set in Barcelona by Mercè Rodoreda, published in 1962.