What's your favorite book (not written by an American or British author)?

Question

I need to read a novel, play, 5 short stories, or a book of poetry by a writer from any country besides the US and/or England. The writing can be classical or contemporary, but I'd appreciate an exciting read!! As I figured this would be an awesome opportunity to read something awesome, I'd like help to find the "perfect" book.

For example,
Anna Karenina (but TOO LONG!!)
Prisoner of Tehran
Stolen Lives by Malima Askar
something by Pearl S. Buck
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Baeb (which i own and am thinking of doing)
From a Crooked Rib by Ruddin Farah
By Bread Alone-Mel Mermelstein?

Much as I love The Kite Runner and its sequel, neither of those are available.
I've already read The Good Earth.

Thanks!!

I seriously appreciate all of the suggestions!! but for some criticism/more information just in case you were wondering what I thought...I've read Demian and The Stranger for this particular class already and would definitely agree that both Herman Hesse and Camus are fantastic. I've heard Kafka makes no sense (I'd like a slightly easy read). I've read Anne Frank, Don Quixote (didn't like it), and The Little Prince. I saw the movie The Neverending Story, and if the book is anything like the movie, well...
I'm currently reading Eva Luna, LOVE IT!!
Crime and Punishment seems a bit too serious (and not dramatic enough).

Answer 1

Pearl Buck is American, she grew up in China.

I loved the Three Musketeers. That is a French author. Little Prince was also written by a Frenchman. Anything by Jules Verne would qualify.

I liked Stanislaw Lem who is a Russian science fiction author.

Garth Nix is Australian. He writes good books.

The Diary of Anne Franke was written by a Dutch Jewish girl.

Answer 2

Milan Kundera The joke, Incredible Lightness of Being, the Book of Laughter and Forgetting and pretty much anything else he has written. One of the problems I have with reading translated novels is that they are only as strong as the translator. I can't imagine trying to read many of my favorite novels in translation, because how do you translate great prose as anything but mediocre prose? I won't say every translated novel suffers from this, but many do. So Kundera, his strengths lie in the ideas he conveys and the emotions. Maybe it is just because he now writes in a second language, French, from his original Czech, but I don't feel the language barrier when I read his books. Oh and if you're doing a paper on him, you have a fairly interesting life, including some rather recent allegations about his informing during his school days. Another plus is that even if your teacher doesn't like his novels personally, they've most likely read some of his commentary on modern writing.

Answer 3

A great non-American and non-British author I would suggest is Spanish novelist Arturo Perez-Reverte. He has written some exciting and intriguing adventure/mystery novels such as his Captain Alatriste series, The Fencing Master, The Flanders Panel, and The Club Dumas.

Some other great titles you might look into are:
The Neverending Story written by German Michael Ende
The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum by Italian Umberto Eco
The Adventures of Pinocchio (Not Disney's corruption) by Italian Carlo Collodi
Les Miserable by Frenchman Victor Hugo
The Divine Comedy by Italian Dante Alighieri
Madame Bovary by Frenchman Gustave Flaubert
Don Quixote by Spaniard Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The Three Musketeers by Frenchman Alexandre Dumas
20,000 Leagues Unders the Sea by Frenchman Jules Verne
There's always the great Russian authors Fyodor Dostoyevesky and Leo Tolstoy too, but their works are awfully heavy to read, IMO.

Answer 4

Jules Verne (French)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Mysterious Island
Around the World in 80 Days
From the Earth to the Moon

Alexandre Dumas (French)
The Three Musketeers
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Man in the Iron Mask

Pierre Boulle (French)
The Planet of the Apes
The Bridge Over the River Kwai

Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French)
The Little Prince

Answer 5

I don't know about the perfect book, but I can suggest some that are completely different which I enjoyed:
'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
'The Name of the Rose' by Umberto Eco. The movie was good, the book is great! He also wrote 'Foucault's Pendulum' which you might think is a spoof on the Da Vinci Code except that it was written in 1988 and there is more to it than that anyway.
'The Queen of the South' by Arturo Perez-Reverte.
'The Engineer of Human Souls' by Josef Skvorecky.
I enjoy reading too.!

Answer 6

Anything by Herman Hesse (german) is beautiful and absolutely amazing.Winner of a nobel prize in literature for his novel The Glass Bead Game, herman hesse is truly one
of most inspiriational writers throughout.
Though his stories are short, they grasp your soul with a life changing concept. Everyone deserves to read at least one Hesse book. My personal recomendations are 'Siddhartha', 'Demian', 'Steppenwolf', and his poems. His books have truly changed the way I see life. You wont understand until you read one of them.

"There is no reality except the one contained within us..." hesse

Answer 7

I love Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian. One Hundred Years of Solitude is his most famous novel, but he also has amazing short stories. I´m thinking The Incredible and Sad Story of Cándida Eréndira and her Soul-less Grandmother.
There is Isabel Allende, Chilean: The House of the Spirits, her best (for me) novel;Tales of Eva Luna (Cuentos de Eva Luna), beautiful short stories.
So many, many more, but those two will entrance you with their art.

Answer 8

Oh! American and British books are the best....
In Italy there are a lot of classic books of our writers but they lived in 1800 and 1900.
At school we read "i promessi sposi" by Alessandro Manzoni but it's very long and he uses a lot of difficult words for an American.
We also have got some short story by Pirandello (novelle per un anno) or Giovanni Verga (such as Nedda) but there are too many dialect expressions.
UMMM, so i'm not helpful, i'm sorry. :)
Bye bye!

Answer 9

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (French)
Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Russian)

Answer 10

There are many excellent books by authors who are not American or British; they either wrote in English or their work were translated to English. Here are some of my favorites:

"Immortality" by Milan Kundera (Czech)
"Leaf Storm" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombian)
"Soul Mountain" by Gao Xingjian (Chinese)
"The Way to Paradise" by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peruvian)
"Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi (Iranian)
"The Distance to Andromeda" by Gregorio C. Brillantes (Filipino)