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Favourite authors not writing in English
It must be the combination of all these year-end lists and a couple of recent threads on contemporary fiction, but I've been thinking about my favourite authors in translation. They're actually close to my favourite authors full stop:
1. Orhan Pamuk (Turkish)
2. Georges Perec (French)
3. Ryszard Kapuscinski (Polish)
4. W.G. Sebald (German)
=5. Haruki Murakami (Japanese)
=5. Cees Nooteboom (Dutch)
I've recently fallen in love with Nooteboom so maybe I am over-/under-rating him. Time will tell.
I won't bother with all the honourable mentions, they may appear below, hopefully with a whole bunch of other writers for me to check out.
(By the way the above are not exclusively fiction:
Pamuk - fiction mostly, but also an excellent memoir of Istanbul
Perec - experimental fiction, perhaps most famous for his novel omitting the letter 'e', A Vanishing (Un Disparation)
Kapuscinski - travel writing and journalism
Sebald - fiction, but blurs the line between autobiography and fiction
Murakami - fiction
Nooteboom - travel writing and fiction)