What do you think is the best novel that was not written originally in English?

The Three Musketeers

Isn't 100 Years of Solitude considered a masterpiece.

I was going to say Three Musketeers as well, R1 -so in keeping with a long Datalounge tradition I hope you die in a grease fire...

Having been pipped at the post I would propose:

The Mysterious Island (Jules Verne)

The Swiss Family Robinson (Johann David Wyss)

À la recherche du temps perdu (Marcel Proust)

Don Quijote

“Like Water for Chocolate” by Laura Esquivel

Don Quijote de la Mancha

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

Crime and Punishment

Anna Karenina should be included.

Madame Bovary

[quote] In terms of just being a hugely satisfying read.

I suppose one could feel satisfied from being able to persevere in getting through a novel that was originally written in Spanish, German, or Russian, but it wouldn’t come from enjoyment.

Tale of Genji

The Master and Margarita

Like Charles Dickens in English, Dumas wrote serialized adventure novels full of drama, emotion, and cliffhangers—hugely popular with the public of his time and still widely loved today. May be enjoyed and understood in translation.

Pevear & Volokhonsky's 1990 translation of The Brothers Karamazov was a revelation for me when I was younger and more intellectual. Much better than the 80 yo translation I struggled with in college. Then Ignat Avsey's 2008 translation finally turned the novel into a good read for anyone, including an old fool like myself who wastes his beautiful mind on the internet now, not great literature.

We by Zamyatin. Huxley and Orwell owe him a large debt but do not eclipse his accomplishment. And We is SHORT.

Maybe you haven't come across great translations, R12. I first read many English-language works in my native Russian, and they were amazing. Shakespeare in particular is just stunning, translated as he was by various superb Russian poets whose own works went unpublished under the Soviet rule.

If we were only allowed to read novels in their original languages, think how many of them we would be unable to read! Even if you can read Spanish, German, and Russian (the three languages r12 names), then there would still be multiple novels written in other languages--French, Italian, Dutch, Bengali, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic--we would not be able to read.

There are hundreds and hundreds of languages in the world; no one in the whole world is able to read all of them. We all basically have to make do with translation at some point or another, but we should do the research so our translations are good ones. But to be snobbish about people reading in translation is pretty ridiculous, especially if they're reading for pleasure.

I second R14, The Master and Margarita is one of the very few novels I have read 10x or more times.

The Bible

^^ that book needed a good editor, though!

TLDR

[quote] We by Zamyatin. Huxley and Orwell owe him a large debt but do not eclipse his accomplishment. And We is SHORT.

Wee, as it were.

[quote] Wee, as it were.

Oui, oui!

In Search of Lost Time. Hands down.

It's the ultimate cliche to say this but War and Peace is a great read.

les miserables

THE LEOPARD. WAR AND PEACE aND ANNA KARENINA.

[quote] I suppose one could feel satisfied from being able to persevere in getting through a novel that was originally written in Spanish, German, or Russian, but it wouldn’t come from enjoyment.

this is crazy, the words of a crazy person.

Once is Not Enough.

You call that “English”?

The English speaking world had to endure Constance Barnett’s translations of great Russian novels for many decades. I know, as I earned an MA in Russian literature, that they were woefully flattened versions of original Russian novels. Maybe it was a product of the times, but after I spent enough time in Russia to attain superior proficiency and read original works, I became wary of Garnett’s translations. She translated зажмуриться глазами as “screw up one’s eyes” in Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, etc. repeatedly. I’ve always hated that weird phrase in English (and it’s a mistranslation) because of her.

In Searth of Lost Time actually gets better after he died because he couldn't rewrite every fucking line to the nth degree. The original conception and first draft execution was by far the best thing ever written.

anything by Gertrude Stein

Lolita

Imagine anyone would ask: What is the best movie made in either the US/UK/Australia/Africa/Europe? Non-English is such a vast selection that it is almost offensive to want to narrow it down to one. There can be dozens from each country.

R34, "Lolita" was written in English.

[quote]Non-English is such a vast selection that it is almost offensive to want to narrow it down to one.

Remember that the definition for best in this thread is "in terms of just being a hugely satisfying read." That's going to remove from consideration the vast majority of books originally written in a foreign language. It's mainly French books that would meet the satisfying read criterion.

Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities) by Goethe, or Candide by Voltaire.

R37 What's foreign is dependent on where you are.

Memoirs of Hadrien

War and Peace

Les Misérables

Anna Karenina

Buddenbrooks

R42. Those might be my choices (though The Magic Mountain might substitute for Buddenbrooks). I’d add Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot—Prince Myushkin is a wonderful creation.

[italic]Cousin Bette[/italic] reads as though Balzac was thinking, "Let's write a novel for the Dataloungers!"

Best. Ending. EVER!

"The Man Without Qualities" could have been a contender

R39 The thread is about novels not originally written in English, duh.

I've always longed to read the great Ming-Qing novels, but have never had the patience for it

R34 reminds me of the twentieth-century high-school poseurs who got busted boasting that "I read 'Lolita' in the original Russian."

LOL R48! I honestly thought I was reading a translated version when I read it in college! This is brand new information to me.

(Thank you, R36!)

No offense, but how can you read 'Lolita' for a college course (English Literature?) and not be aware that it's thought to contain some of the greatest prose ever written in the English language?

No, my friends and I read it for fun simply because we liked that Police song so much.

R46 So I guess you are at home in the US/UK/Australia at once? Stop being so smug.