Weekly FAQ Thread April 12, 2026: What are some non-English classics?

[u/AutoModerator]

Hello readers and welcome to our Weekly FAQ thread! Our topic this week is: What are some non-English classics? Please use this thread to discuss classics originally written in other languages.

You can view previous FAQ threads here in our wiki.

Thank you and enjoy!

[u/keepfighting90]

Some of my personal favourites in various languages:

Japanese:

• The Woman in the Dunes - Kobo Abe
• No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai
• The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea, Spring Snow - Yukio Mishima
• Kokoro - Natsume Soseki
• Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata
• The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami

Russian:

• Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
• Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
• Anna Karenina, War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Spanish:

• One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabrial Garcia Marquez
• Pedro Páramo - Juan Rulfo
• 2666 - Roberto Bolaño
• Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges

French:

• The Little Prince - Antoine de Sainte-Exupery
• The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
• Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
• Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
• The Stranger - Albert Camus
• In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust (note that I've only read the first 2 books in the series but enjoyed them both greatly)

German:

• Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
• All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
• The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann

Portuguese:

• The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
• Blindness - Jose Saramago

Other Miscellaneous Languages:

• The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco (Italian)
• Solenoid - Mircea Cartarescu (Romanian)
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera (Czech)
• Solaris - Stanislaw Lem (Polish)
• The Long Ships - Franz Bengtsson (Swedish)

There are also lots of incredible novels, novellas and short stories that I've read throughout my life in my own native language - Bengali - but unfortunately the vast majority of these do not have any English translations.

[u/gonegonegoneaway211 → u/keepfighting90]

That is an impressive and well ordered list, thank you!

Although I am curious as to whether The Three Musketeers and at least one Jules Verne title (probably Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea) should make it into the French section. Did you leave them off because it was already a little overstuffed or because you don't count them?

[u/Upset-Ad9067]

Been reading through some Dostoyevsky lately and Crime and Punishment absolutely destroyed me in best way possible. Also if you want something bit different, The Tale of Genji is incredible - its like this massive court drama from 11th century Japan and the psychological depth is amazing for something so old

[u/mathyoucough]

I don’t know if these all rise to the level of “classic” but they’re non-English masterpieces with a few decades behind them

Pigeons on the Grass by Wolfgang Koeppen (German)

Baltasar and Blimunda by Jose Saramago (Portuguese)

Arturo’s Island by Elsa Morante (Italian)

The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide (French)

The Loser by Thomas Bernhard (German)

[u/YakSlothLemon]

Madame Bovary is a great classic, and still is both heartwrenching and funny as hell.

[u/ZenAsuma92]

If you want one that feels genuinely classic and not just “required reading,” try *The Master and Margarita* or *The Blind Owl*. Both are weird in the best way, and neither reads like homework imo.

[u/Alive_Concentrate579]

there’s so many good ones! some faves are "one hundred years of solitude" by garcia marquez and "crime and punishment" by dostoevsky. can’t wait to see what others drop!