The German weekly Die Zeit has been running a series on a post-war literay canon of European literature, naming some 70 novels -- ten for each post-war decade -- that they think belong.
Iris Radisch explains the exercise in Europas Weltliteratur, and the novels are listed -- annoyingly over six pages, rather than in one simple, neat list ... -- here.
For a German-heavy list there are some striking omissions -- led by Peter Weiss' epochal The Aesthetics of Resistance, though I'd also make a strong case for Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries. (The very few British selections are predictable, and the absence of other titles suggests they really don't get English lit at all.)
Still, I'm surprised by how many of these I've read (a quick count suggests over fifty of the seventy), and quite a few are under review at the complete review (predictably, I read most of the older ones long before I started the site):
For a German-heavy list there are some striking omissions -- led by Peter Weiss' epochal The Aesthetics of Resistance, though I'd also make a strong case for Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries. (The very few British selections are predictable, and the absence of other titles suggests they really don't get English lit at all.)
Still, I'm surprised by how many of these I've read (a quick count suggests over fifty of the seventy), and quite a few are under review at the complete review (predictably, I read most of the older ones long before I started the site):
- 1975: Fatelessness by Kertész Imre
- 1976: A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kiš
- 1992: The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch
- 1995: Melancholy by Jon Fosse
- 1998: All Souls Day by Cees Nooteboom
- 1998: The Elementary Particles (Atomised) by Michel Houellebecq
- 2002: Snow by Orhan Pamuk
- 2004: The Book about Blanche and Marie by Per Olov Enquist
- 2005: Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann
- 2008: Der Turm by Uwe Tellkamp