Anonymous
ITT: Best books that aren't translated into english 06/08/26(Mon)18:12:17 No. 25329554
ITT: Best books that aren't translated into english 06/08/26(Mon)18:12:17 No. 25329554
ITT: Best books that aren't translated into english Anonymous
06/08/26(Mon)18:12:17
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25329554
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Starting with Tovaryšstvo ježíšovo (Society of Jesus) by Jiří Šotola. If you know czech you should read this book.
It is a Czech historical novel set around the Jesuit order and the tense religious, political, and moral atmosphere of early modern Bohemia. It is not just a story about history, but a sharp psychological and philosophical exploration of power, faith, obedience, doubt, and personal conscience. Šotola avoids simple heroes and villains, showing instead how people can be trapped by institutions, ideals, and their own ambitions, which makes the novel intellectually rich, unsettling, and still deeply relevant.
It is stealthy allegory of how czech communist party worked and sucked fanatical individuals dry, but it can be generalized onto any ideological hierarchy and any fanatical believer in it. Knowing this the book is even crazier, becouse it was written in 1960s, the author did not expect communist regimes to fall. The book is hopelless and everything gets worse and worse, until it ends, just to begin again anew.
It is also written in baroque language, which could be compared to Cormac McCarthy, but has it's own and far greater tradition in Czech literature.
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>>25329554
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>>25329554
Striptease by argentinian writer Enrique Medina.
It's about a strip theater in a basement and a detailed account of its shows and the public who turned the theater into their home and shelter. It may sound monotonous, but it's a page-turner and brilliantly written.
The only untranslatable work in Spanish I've come across so far.
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>>25329554
I guess I'll add it to the stack. It has been hard to get into baroque literature, feels like it's 20 guys who all wrote the same thing because everything else was banned after White Mountain.
(How is it that Arne Novák reads fine, but Šváb's older Czech literature is the most marxist shit ever? Why is this in my recommended literature when it's all hussites were protogommunist hurr?)
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And I guess I'll match you with another certified hood classic: Stone and Pain by Karel Schulz. Historical fiction, biography of Micheangelo in his wider historical context. The church and money, religion and art, idolatry and expression, the innate and the perceived. Art as a spiritual process. Also a very comfy read... if you are in the appropriate language.
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>>25329624
Sadly he never finished it. Czechs are thoughever absolute masters of historical fiction. Pic related is completely autistic, you may like it, but it's pretty rare.