schwob_logo

schwob

marcel
The World's Best Unknown Books

Filter

Genre
16 02 2015
Tip

The Killing of the Second Dog

 

Marek Hłasko

Translation Tomasz Mirkowicz

Hlasko’s writing combines brutal realism with smoky, hardboiled dialogue in a bleak world where violence is the norm and love is often an act.

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Polish
Published
1965
Translated
2014
Publisher
New Vessel Press
21 03 2014
Tip

A Long Day's Evening

 

Bilge Karasu

Translation Aron Aji

A Long Day’s Evening revolves around the relationship between two eighth-century monks. Through these main characters, Karasu explores the nature of duality.

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Turkish
Published
1970
Translated
2013
Publisher
Metis Yayinlari/Metis Books
04 04 2018
Tip

The Transylvanian Trilogy

 

Miklós Bánffy

Translation Patrick Thursfield and Katalin Bánffy-Jelen

They Were Counted, the first part of the trilogy, paints an unrivalled portrait of the vanished world of pre-1914 Hungary, as seen through the eyes of two young Transylvanian cousins, Count Balint…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Hungarian
Published
1934
Translated
2012
Publisher
Arcadia Books
04 04 2013
Tip

Niki, the story of a dog

 

Tibor Déry

Translation Edward Hyams

‘The dog adopted the Ancsas in the spring of 1948’. So the story begins. The Ancsas are a middle-aged couple living on the outskirts of Budapest in a ruinous Hungary that is just…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Hungarian
Published
1956
Translated
2009
Publisher
NYRB Classics
16 10 2010
Tip

The Parson’s Widow

 

Marja-Liisa Vartio

Translation Aili and Austin Flint

Posthumously published in 1967, Hänen olivat linnut (literally: His Were the Birds) is regarded as a masterpiece of modern Finnish novel. The novel centres around the question how a human being is…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Finnish
Published
1967
Translated
2008
Publisher
Dalkey Archive Press
04 04 2013
Tip

The Roar of Morning

 

Tip Marugg

Translation Paul Vincent

Tip Marugg was the hermit of Curaçao, an island in the Netherlands Antilles, and the author of a small body of excep­tionally fine literary work. His novels show the touch of a master stylist who…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Dutch
Published
1988
Translated
2004
Publisher
Gardners Books
21 03 2014
Tip

Short Stories

 

Adelheid Duvanel

Translation Patricia H. Stanley

On a night in July, at the age of sixty, Adelheid Duvanel froze to death in a forest. But it is not just the manner of her death that is reminiscent of Robert Walser. The wholehearted naiveté of her…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
German
Published
1960
Translated
2002
Publisher
University Press of America
04 04 2010
Tip

Character

 

Ferdinand Bordewijk

Those who met Ferdinand Bordewijk described him as an impeccable yet nondescript lawyer. Even the few acquaintances he deigned to meet privately found it almost impossible to extract personal…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Dutch
Published
1938
Translated
1999
Publisher
Ivan R. Dee
22 10 2012

Double Play

 

Frank Martinus Arion

Translation Paul Vincent

In his books Frank Martinus Arion tries to provide readers with ‘critical knowledge about reality’, while at the same time getting them ‘so immersed in the book that they forget about the food…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Dutch
Published
1973
Translated
1998
Publisher
Faber and Faber; London
02 04 2011
Tip

The Sergeant in the Snow

 

Mario Rigioni Stern

Translation Archibald Colquhoun

Like his compatriot Primo Levi, the Italian writer Mario Rigoni Stern, who has died aged 86, was the author of a much-admired bestselling memoir about his grim experiences during the Second World…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Italian
Published
1953
Translated
1998
Publisher
Northwestern University Press
28 08 2013
Tip

Merlin and Company

 

Álvaro Cunqueiro

Translation Colin Smith

Long after Arthur’s last battle, Merlin and Guinevere live on. They retire to their house in Miranda, in the province of Galicia - though retire is hardly the word. Representatives of Europe’s…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Galician
Published
1955
Translated
1996
Publisher
Everyman
04 04 2013
Tip

Solitude

 

Victor Català (Caterina Albert)

Translation David H. Rosenthal

Although written under the masculine pseudonym Victor Català, this work by Caterina Albert undoubtedly constitutes the starting point of the exploration of female identity by female writers in…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Catalan
Published
1905
Translated
1992
Publisher
Readers Intl
04 04 2018
Tip

How I Came to Know Fish

 

Ota Pavel

Translation Robert McDowell

An exceptional collection of stories about a magical childhood during the Nazi occupation. One of Czech literature’s best-loved classics.

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Czech
Published
1971
Translated
1990
Publisher
Penguin Modern Classics
04 04 2018
Tip

An Autumn Story

 

Tommaso Landolfi

Translation Joachim Neugroshel

Tommaso Landolfi has the reputation of being a “writer’s writer,” most of whose novels and short stories are out of print despite the high praise of authors as distinguished as…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Italian
Published
1947
Translated
1989
Publisher
Eridanos Press (USA)
02 10 2009
Tip

Daemon in Lithuania

 

Henri Guigonnat

Translation Barbara Wright

In an imagined Lithuania where if it is not raining, it is probably snowing, a very odd family resides in a Neo-Gothic chateau surrounded by an overgrowth of trees, vines, and general miasmic…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
French
Published
1973
Translated
1985
Publisher
New Directions Book
05 09 2012
Tip

Snob's Island

 

Henrik Tikkanen

Translation Mary Sandbach

Henrik Tikkanen wrote a series of novellas about a single family, members of the small Finnish-Swedish elite that used to dominate Finland’s financial, political and cultural life. With the…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Swedish
Published
1975
Translated
1980
Publisher
Chatto & Windus (London)
22 08 2013
Tip

Life in the Tomb

 

Stratis Myrivilis

Translation Peter Bien

Stratis Myrivilis’ masterwork Life in the Tomb presents the personal experience of war with precision, respect and exasperation, in a voice that is both introspectively poetic and harsh.…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Greek
Published
1924
Translated
1977
Publisher
University Press of New England, Quartet Encounters, Cosmos Publishers
04 04 2018
Tip

On the Edge of Reason

 

Miroslav Krleža

Translation Zora Depolo

On the Edge of Reason reveals the fundamental chasm between conformity and individuality. As folly piles on folly, hypocrisy on hypocrisy, reason itself begins to give way, and the edge between…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Croatian
Published
1938
Translated
1976
Publisher
New Directions
04 04 2018
Tip

Professor Mmaa's Lecture

 

Stefan Themerson

“I recommend this book to the reader because it is massive, impressive, and grimly amusing. I cannot promise the reader that at any point he will shake his sides with laughter, but I can promise…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Polish
Published
1953
Translated
1976
Publisher
Tusk / The Overlook Press
10 09 2012
Tip

One Moonlit Night

 

Caradog Prichard

Translation Philip Mitchell

For a boy growing up in a quarrying village in north-west Wales in the early twentieth century, life can be full of adventure and comedy, but never without a dark side. In this thinly-disguised…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Welsh
Published
1961
Translated
1973
Publisher
Canongate
02 04 2014
Tip

Epp

 

Axel Jensen

Translation Oliver Stallybrass

Axel Jensen’s Epp (1965) is a darkly dystopian book about a pensioner called Epp, who is living in a town on an unnamed planet in a big block surrounded by hundreds of similar blocks. The society…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Norwegian
Published
1965
Translated
1967
Publisher
Chatto & Windus
04 04 2018
Tip

The Book of Paradise

 

Itzik Manger

Translation Leonard Wolf

Dos Bukh fun Gan-Eden is a satirical fantasy set in Paradise – a humorous vision of the afterlife in which familiar human weaknesses and pains persist. In the book Yiddish culture with its…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Yiddish
Published
1939
Translated
1965
Publisher
Hill and Wang
10 09 2012
Tip

A Toy Epic

 

Emyr Humphreys

Emyr Humphreys’s seventh published novel, originally completed in 1942, was (in its first draft) his earliest novelistic writing. Revised and rewritten in Welsh, it was broadcast as a radio play by…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Welsh
Published
1958
Translated
1958
Publisher
Eyre & Spottiswoode
09 10 2012
Tip

The Ten Thousand Things

 

Maria Dermoût

Translation Hans Koning

A consummate stylist, Maria Dermoût is renowned for leaving her readers with final sentences that resonate with hope and consolation. She invests her characters with strength and self-awareness, in…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Dutch
Published
1955
Translated
1958
Publisher
New York Review Books
09 09 2012
Tip

Niels Lyhne

 

Jens Peter Jacobsen

Translation Hanna Astrup Larsen

Niels Lyhne,” Freud wrote to Wilhelm Fliess in 1895, “has moved me more profoundly than any other reading of the last ten years; the last chapters I recognize as classic.” …

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Danish
Published
1880
Translated
1919
Publisher
New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation
09 09 2012
Tip

Chronicles of a Hidden Truth

 

Pere Calders

Chronicles of the Hidden Truth is a collection of thirty-one short stories renowned for their unusual imaginative twists, the originality of their humor, and the gentle irony of their commentary on…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Catalan
Published
1955
Publisher
Grup 62/ Planeta
05 09 2012
Tip

Mirdja

 

L. Onerva

Mirdja is a book about feminity and the search for a female identity at the beginning of the twentieth century. The protagonist assumes the role of a femme fatale, as it is the only way to achieve…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Finnish
Published
1908
Publisher
Brutus Östlings bokf Symposion
30 07 2014
Tip

Postal Deviations

 

Kazimierz Brandys

Translation Antonia Lloyd-Jones

The epistolary novel would seem a very worthy, classic genre, but in Postal Deviations Kazimierz Brandys has managed to get a great deal out of this formula, giving us a novel that is thoroughly…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Polish
Published
1972
Publisher
09 09 2012
Tip

Rabies

 

Borislav Pekić

Rabies is a vision of the end of the world, or at least the end of what we, in our anthropocentric vanity, take for the world. The novel depicts a microbiological catastrophe that occurs because of a…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
Serbian
Published
1983
Publisher
Laguna
28 08 2013
Tip

Requiem of the Innocent

 

Louis Calaferte

Translation Amanda Hopkinson

A childhood in poverty, misery and cynicism; a search for friendship and a trust that is always broken. The powerlessness of children left on their own, exposed to the brutality of adults: all of…

Genre
Fiction
Original language
French
Published
1952
Publisher
Éditions Julliard

Schwob this!

Which neglected masterpiece should Schwob cover next?