Best European languages for reading novels

[Cavesa]

The best language is obviously Romansh .

Seriously, in terms of quantity, cultural influence and tradition English and FIGS stand out, and I would also add Russian with its strong novelistic tradition going back to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

In the end though, it is all very subjective, and you can find literary gems in much smaller languages. I say Romansh, because there are some really great Romansh writers who open the door to a unique European minority culture - and for me it was worth learning the language just to be able to read those (relatively) few books that have been written by these authors. I could also mention languages like Czech (e.g. Milan Kundera and Václav Havel), or Hungarian (e.g. György Konrád and Imre Kertész). Catalan also has a number of great contemporary writers. In short, you can find quality literature in most European languages, big or small. In a relatively small country like Norway more than 1000 original literary works are published each year, while some 1500 translated works are published (the figure includes novels, poetry, short stories, plays etc.).

This is very true, but I'd like to avoid associating original works in smaller languages with getting to know a smaller culture as their only value. Not only Kundera is more of a French writer than a Czech one (and by his choice, actually, this is no judgement or anything). But not everyone reads the great books that often. The importance of smaller literatures in certain genres is not just local and "great, you'll get to know their tiny culture", they are actually interesting and valuable on a larger scale. They are interesting not only for someone fascinated by the one country or learner of its language.

A few examples: We will probably agree that languages like Polish, Swedish, Czech are among the less interesting languages, if you look at the overall numbers (like that table), or if you are looking for books mentioned in university corpuses (actually, those are usually pretty biased, I read a few interesting articles about the bias. It is fun to find out the differences between the individual countries, they are huge. In short: noone can avoid the old Greeks, Shakespeare, French and Russian classics, but other than that, everyone is trying to make their literature look important ).

But if you are looking for crime novels, Swedish and Norwegian are suddenly important languages. There is quite a big tradition of Czech crime novels too, which may be interesting for lovers of this genre, despite the overall unimportance of our literature. When it comes to fantasy and sci-fi, suddenly Poland can compete against France or Spain or Germany. Sapkowski is not a lonely fantasy author in an otherwise poor tradition, nothing like that, there is much to explore. Czech fantasy and sci-fi is just a small step under Poland, when it comes to amount of good quality fantasy and sci-fi. And I could talk for a long time (and often do in my log) about the awesome specifics of each fantasy and sci-fi region. Poland is actually one of the most important european producers of BDs these days, as I learnt quite recently, and they really look fascinating, as far as I could explore. Historical novels: Spanish, French, or German will give you more books than you can read in a life time. But again, Polish has quite a lot of those too, including famous authors and books (Quo Vadis is one of the famous examples, but there are many more), and they may offer a bit different points of view.

So, I'd say that Sfuqua's note about his prefered genres is of extreme importance. There is absolutely no point in discussing important literature languages in general. I trully can't see any value in regurgitating what we all know. But once we look closer, the question becomes fascinating. It is just hard to dive into a new literature at the beginning, that's why I prefer personal recommendations or leafing through books in a store to general huge impersonal lists on wikipedia. But once you find a few authors you like, the search becomes much easier.

[tarvos]

Honestly, each nation with a wide literary tradition has enough to offer for everybody. Search a little deeper, and who knows what Bulgarian wizardry might turn up.

[Cavesa]

This is the reason why I find topics like this ("Best European languages for reading novelsBest European languages for reading novels") culturally insensitive or eurocentric to say the least. Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against the original poster, sfuqua, nor do I think all languages have the same amount of written and/or oral literature produced in the language. I just don't think recognition and acknowledgement of the literature is the same as the quality of the literature.

I have a friend who is a PhD candidate in classical Korean literature. Once she took part in a comparative literature workshop, and she told me of one of the scholars who made a very interesting point. Apparently, the demand for any literature has very little to do with the quality of literature itself, but more to do with the power of the country in which the language is spoken. Hence, the recent increase of interest in Korean literature has more to do with the Korean history of economic development and the popularity of K-Pop and K-drama, rather than increase in recognition of the quality of Korean literature.

My own experience with different languages also confirms this hypothesis. While I believe that Hindi Chhayavaad poetry is as beautiful as English Romantic poetry, it would have been impossible for me to read or even know about the former, had I not majored in Indian Studies. On the other hand, if I wanted to read English Romantic poetry, I would find many translations and reading guides, even in Korean, only because the English-speaking countries such as the US and the UK are considered to be more important and powerful than India.

Not all languages have a rich tradition of literature, true. Yet it is also true that the languages that are considered to have fruitful literature are considered so not solely based on literary merits, but also on political, economic and cultural influence the countries exercise on others.

A thousand times yes. I would love to see a similar thread about non-european languages too, but it would be of limited value to me at this point.Actually, it could help me choose a language to learn once I have time to leave the safe teritory of easier languages

Yes, the power has a lot to do with it. Economy too. Anglophone literature is so popular as people are forced to learn the language at schools or for business, so they just look at the books as an added value. And a publisher choosing books to import is much more likely to understand English directly than other languages.

But there are examples of quite important and powerful countries, who are probably just bad at PR, including spreading their literature. I've recently read an interview with an Irani author (a woman currently in exile), who mentioned how many books are being published in Iran every year. I doubt most are translation, considering the relative isolation of the country. How comes we find so few in our bookstores? Or the Arab speaking countries. We are usually connecting them with Koran and religious literature only. But there are surely tons of other books, I highly doubt a normal entertainment or modern literature seeking Egyptian or Saudi can't buy authors writing in their language and living in their countries. How comes we can't see the books? I've seen few of those in bookstores in half Europe. I almost always go to a bookstore, when visiting a country, as it is a great insight in the culture and contemporary joys and struggles and passions of the people. Similarily, how comes Hebrew or Chinese books are quite rare? Yes, some Chinese genres are being translated at least to English (I've met one Czech fan of a certain adventure genre typical of China, and he can access them only through English), but other than that, this bilion people doesn't seem well represented in bookstores on the european continent. Haruki Murakami broke the "wall" and became popular worldwide. But how many Japanese authors would we love, if we discovered them?

You are totally right there are more factors, and that non-european literatures are underrepresented in Europe and possibly on the american continent too (I don't have the direct experience)

[Xenops]

It was only after reading the British "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" did I realize that the American public only has access to a few best-sellers in other countries, and we don't see an actual sample of what people in other countries read. This also applies to interests: you can find a hundred books about the history of Japanese comics in English, but not a single book about the history of Korean comics.

[Finny]

Honestly, each nation with a wide literary tradition has enough to offer for everybody. Search a little deeper, and who knows what Bulgarian wizardry might turn up.

Yup. A hundred years from now, this thread might simply be titled "Best novels to read" because English (or Spanish or Chinese) is effectively the global language due to hegemony. It certainly won't mean that all the other extinct and dying languages didn't have several lifetimes of literature worth reading; it'll just mean the cultures that went along with them were squished out of existence by the last language(s) left standing.

[William Camden]

People who know English as an L1 or a good L2 are privileged in many ways. Much of the Internet is in English, so many books are published in English too. My guess is that the lack of books in Tagalog is because book readers in the Phillipines read English-language books.

[garyb]

The thread is specifically about European languages - it's even in the subject line. The fact that lots of many non-European languages also have great literature is a good point, but completely off-topic.

[Jiwon]

The thread is specifically about European languages - it's even in the subject line. The fact that lots of many non-European languages also have great literature is a good point, but completely off-topic.

Yes, you are right. I am sorry for derailing this thread somewhat.

But I think comments like below are also off-topic (in the sense it doesn't have anything to do with the thread topic) and very hurtful.

Holy cow! You're not kidding about the lack of books published in Tagalog! Look at the number of "translations from" for Tagalog (listed as Filipino), and look at the number of speakers. That might be the record low on the list for "translations from" divided by number of speakers. Apparently there is very little worldwide interest in anything published in Tagalog.

I agree that there are "hub languages", to which many works are translated. If you learn these languages, you will have greater access to materials produced all over the globe.
I also agree that some languages may have fewer works of written literature. There are so many reasons for this, and I don't want to argue against them. Some languages have too few native speakers; maybe the oral tradition was more important; or the literary tradition has been discontinued due to internal or external forces; or a colonial language may have taken over the role of the literary languages.

I only wanted to point out that lack of translations from one language may not mean the language does not produce much in terms of literary works. Similarly, lack of international recognition is not the same as lack of quality or quantity. This is the reason why we need international forums like this, because without them we wouldn't know what people on the other side of the world are reading.

[William Camden]

Many European languages did not have much of a literature until relatively recently. At about the start of the 20th century an Austrian aristocrat protested on the floor of the Austrian parliament against giving rights to the Slovene language as opposed to German. He held one or two books in his hand and claimed these were the sum total of literature in Slovene. No doubt he was exaggerating, but most literate Slovene speakers had until recently used German or Latin to write and read, rather than the language they spoke day to day. As recently as the 1920s Kurt Tucholsky, a German writer, ridiculed writing in the Czech language, saying that "We are used to the claims being made on behalf of smaller languages. Hungary only produces the finest literature." Even Kafka's decision to write in German may have been logical in that this was the language in which he was educated and his written Czech was not very good, though he spoke it fluently, but it probably also reflected the prestige of German as opposed to Czech.

[DaveBee]

Even Kafka's decision to write in German may have been logical in that this was the language in which he was educated and his written Czech was not very good, though he spoke it fluently, but it probably also reflected the prestige of German as opposed to Czech.

According to Wikipedia Mr Kafka came from a german-speaking family.

Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.