• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Your country's writers.

V

veniqe

New Member
Are there any people here NOT from the UK/USA? I'd love to hear about your writers. Do you have any prolific writers and do you read them?

South Africa has many, many writers and I try to read them all but it's difficult to keep up sometimes. New writers pop up every two weeks or so. :)

when I finish HOAYS, I'll concentrate on reading Zakes Mda. I also need to start on Indaba, My Children before I die..
 
Yep, I'm one of those funky foreigners. I'm Canadian, and as far as our literature goes, here are a few well known authors (to teenagers, anyway):

- Eric Wilson, author of a shitload of children's mysteries involving Tom Austen, a child detective.
- Eric Walters , author of a bunch of children's books; many of them concerning actual events and people (Terry Fox, for one).

And for the adults, here are a few writers and their most acclaimed work:

- Margaret Atwood - Handmaid's Tale
- Lucy Maude Montgomery - Anne Of Green Gables
- Carol Shields - The Stone Diaries
 
Anne of Green Gables rocks! I didn't even know the author's Canadian.. Or perhaps I forgot. :(

i have 2 Atwood's on my TBR list. I've already read one of her books.
 
Witi Ihimaera would probably be the most prolific NZ author (he wrote The Whale Rider, which is okay but might be a bit hard to understand if you don't know the main Maori terms such as aroha or whanau, which are used quite a bit in the book.).

Margaret Mahy is another major author, but I think her books are more for children.

And you also may have heard of Ian Cross, who wrote The God Boy.
 
Mihai Eminescu is probably the most famous Romanian poet.
I personally love Ion Luca Caragiale; he mostly wrote plays and short stories.
I also like Liviu Rebreanu and Mircea Eliade.
Some of their works were translated as far as i know but i don't really know which :)

As for new writers i honestly don't know...i don't really read Romanian stuff...though i keep saying i will. I just never know what to get :(
 
Oh wow, this is pretty cool! I know nothing about New Zealand authors. I'll definitely try to find some of his books.
 
Keri Hume is a great NZ writer. I love her book The Bone People. It won the Booker about 20 years ago.

Also, among the Canadians, Robertson Davies is really good, particularly The Deptford Trilogy. I read Alice Munro's short stories last year, which are good but not up the the brilliant reviews, IMO. I love Douglas Coupland's Generation X.
And Michael Ondaatje's memoir of Ceylon, Running in the Family, is great.

That reminds me of another good book by a Ceylonese author, The Hamilton Case by Michelle de Kretser. But Ondaatje is Canadian, of Ceylonese descent.
 
I'm an American, but I live in Belgium. From what I understand, Belgium has produced some fine writers, but unfortunately I only know one: Amélie Nothomb. I read one of her books, Fear and Trembling, which was a semi-autobiographical short novel about a Belgian girl working in Japan for one year and dealing with the cultural changes required to survive in a Japanese office. I really enjoyed it.
 
Georges Simenon, brilliant author of the Maigret series, is Belgian. His books are both clever and simple, a neat trick to pull off.
 
This is a linkto a site featuring some Australian authors. A few who I've read and enjoyed are Murray Bail, Peter Carey, Paul Jennings, and I love a good Henry Lawson story.
 
novella said:
Keri Hume is a great NZ writer. I love her book The Bone People. It won the Booker about 20 years ago.
Click to expand...
Ah, yes, I was going to mention her but it totally slipped my mind when I came to forming my reply. And I also forgot to mention Sam Hunt, probably our most famous poet (sorry, I can't really add my own opinion on his works because I'm not a big fan of poetry).

EDIT: And Katherine Mansfield, of course! She wrote some really good short stories (such as The Doll's House and The Garden Party), but I haven't read any of her novels.
 
Peronel said:
Paul Jennings
Click to expand...
His books are great - I was addicted to them when I was younger, and we loved it when our teacher read them to us. My favourite has to be The Busker, although it always made me sad.
Bryce Courtenay is another Australian author that I have to mention because I think he's fantastic (he's of The Power of One fame).
 
Some Canadian authors I like, not yet mentioned:

Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance
William Gibson - daddy of "cyberpunk"
Guy Vanderhaeghe - An Englishman's Boy
Wayson Choy - Jade Peony
Joy Kogawa - even if only for her wonderful Obasan
 
veniqe said:
Are there any people here NOT from the UK/USA?
Click to expand...

Aww! Thats not entirely fair. Being part of the UK doesn't mean that the countries outside of England have a lot of popular and well known authors. How many Scottish, Welsh or Irish authors can you consider as famous as all the English ones? :rolleyes:

Sorry, I get this way when being constantly lumped in with England. :p
 
tartan_skirt said:
Aww! Thats not entirely fair. Being part of the UK doesn't mean that the countries outside of England have a lot of popular and well known authors. How many Scottish, Welsh or Irish authors can you consider as famous as all the English ones? :rolleyes:

Sorry, I get this way when being constantly lumped in with England. :p
Click to expand...


I got a little upset when I found out that Scotland was not on the list of countries for the Olympic Challenge. Since it seemed stupid and grossly unfair to overlook a country that has contributed so much to the world's literature cache, I took Stewart's advice and read Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
 
tartan_skirt said:
Aww! Thats not entirely fair. Being part of the UK doesn't mean that the countries outside of England have a lot of popular and well known authors. How many Scottish, Welsh or Irish authors can you consider as famous as all the English ones? :rolleyes:

Sorry, I get this way when being constantly lumped in with England. :p
Click to expand...

Hey, I wasn't trying to offend anyone here.. Let's just blame it on my ignorance, shall we?

I was merely trying to get to know of other writers who aren't very well known in English speaking countries. That's why I singled out the UK/USA.
 
veniqe said:
Hey, I wasn't trying to offend anyone here.. Let's just blame it on my ignorance, shall we?

I was merely trying to get to know of other writers who aren't very well known in English speaking countries. That's why I singled out the UK/USA.
Click to expand...

I know, I just feel the need to stand up for Scottish writers at times. :p
 
Ell said:
Some Canadian authors I like, not yet mentioned:

Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance
William Gibson - daddy of "cyberpunk"
Guy Vanderhaeghe - An Englishman's Boy
Wayson Choy - Jade Peony
Joy Kogawa - even if only for her wonderful Obasan
Click to expand...

Hey... that's cheating... Gibson's an American living in Canada...

The only one that comes to mind at the moment is Catherine Lim. We aren't a nation of strong writers unfortunately.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top