Literary Exploration discussion

May's is a translated fiction theme, so we need some book nominations. Let us know what book you are suggesting.

Rules
* can't nominate your own book
* only one nomination per person
* first 6-8 books will be chosen
* need to tell us why you are suggesting this book
* be respectful of other people's choices

I'll nominate Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong, translated by Howard Goldblatt

"China's runaway bestseller and winner of the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize"

"Published in China in 2004, Wolf Totem has broken all sales records, selling millions of copies (along with millions more on the black market).. Part period epic, part fable for modern days, Wolf Totem depicts the dying culture of the Mongols-the ancestors of the Mongol hordes who at one time terrorized the world-and the parallel extinction of the animal they believe to be sacred: the fierce and otherworldly Mongolian wolf.

"Beautifully translated by Howard Goldblatt, the foremost translator of Chinese fiction, this extraordinary novel is finally available in English."(Goldblatt is also the translator for Nobel Laureate Mo Yan)

I nominate My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish writer. It has mystery, a love story, and art stories. Sounds intriguing.

Nice ones already, I want to read both these books

I will nominate Eugénie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac. Here Grandet embodies both the passionate pursuit of money, and the human cost of avarice.
Balzac was an influence on innumerable writers who followed him, including Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe and Gustave Flaubert.

to get this moving, I'm gonna nominate a book I've been wanting to read for a while now. Death and the Penguin by Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov

Okay, I made up my mind and want to nominate Jules et Jim by Henri-Pierre Roché. Legend has it that Francois Truffaut, who adapted the novel to film, was so impressed that he learned the whole book by heart (it's short in comparison, but still!).

It's about two friends in Paris in the 1910s who meet mesmerizing Kate. There is something of a love triangle, but life happens and gets between them. After a long time, they meet again.

This is also an auto-biographical text and the characters, "in love with each other and with life", sound interesting.

I nominate "Visitation" by Jenny Erpenbeck, because it is a book covering 100 years of history across the lives of 12 people, which sounds like an interesting concept. It was originally published in German.

Oh, that's a good one too. I heard about this on the radio and it sounded intriguing.

I think we have enough, thanks all for the nominations;
Wolf Totem
My Name is Red
Eugénie Grandet
Death and the Penguin
Jules et Jim
Visitation

Poll can be found here; https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...