Items20The creator’s order
  1. 1吾輩は猫である (1905)吾輩は猫である (1905) 8.7/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1905Natsume Sōseki's I Am a Cat is narrated by a nameless house cat who has never caught a mouse and has plenty of opinions about the humans who feed him. His owner is a dyspeptic schoolteacher, and the visitors who drift through the house are a parade of pompous scholars and idle talkers in Meiji-era…0
  2. 2Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války (1926)Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války (1926) 8.4/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1926The Good Soldier Švejk is the great comic novel of the First World War, told from the bottom of the Austro-Hungarian army. Švejk obeys every order with such cheerful, rambling literalness that the whole military machine seizes up around him, and nobody can tell whether he is an idiot or a genius at…0
  3. 3Zeno's Conscience (2019)Zeno's Conscience (2019)Published 1 Jan 2019Anyone who has sworn off a bad habit on a meaningful date and lapsed by lunchtime will recognize Zeno Cosini. Svevo's narrator writes his memoir for his psychoanalyst, and his famous resolutions to smoke one last cigarette, each one followed by another, set the tone for a life of self-serving…0
  4. 4Двенадцать стульев (1938)Двенадцать стульев (1938) 7.4/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1938The Twelve Chairs, from 1928, is a treasure hunt through the early Soviet Union: a set of dining chairs has been scattered across the country, and one of them hides a fortune in jewels. The hunt is led by Ostap Bender, the smooth-talking "great schemer," who became one of Russian literature's most…0
  5. 5Ferdydurke (1961)Ferdydurke (1961) 8.4/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1961Ferdydurke is for readers who like their comedy unhinged. A thirty-year-old writer wakes up to find himself turned back into a schoolboy and marched off to class, and from there Gombrowicz runs wild with the ways adults, teachers and polite society squeeze people into roles they never chose. It is…0
  6. 6Zazie dans le métro (1959)Zazie dans le métro (1959) 5.5/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1959Zazie in the Metro is the shortest route on this list to laughing out loud. Impish, foul-mouthed Zazie arrives in Paris from the country to stay with her uncle Gabriel, and all she wants is to ride the metro, which is shut by a strike. What follows is a single breathless weekend of chases,…0
  7. 7The Master and Margarita (1967)The Master and Margarita (1967) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1967The devil comes to 1930s Moscow in The Master and Margarita, bringing a retinue that includes a huge, gun-toting, wisecracking black cat, and the city's literary bureaucrats, theater managers and housing officials never stand a chance. The satire is savage, the set pieces are wildly funny, and…0
  8. 8Dona Flor e seus dais maridos (1966)Dona Flor e seus dais maridos (1966) 8.4/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1966Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands is the warmest and sexiest book here. Flor, who runs a cooking school in Bahia, loses her first husband, the gambling charmer Vadinho, who collapses in the middle of Carnival. She marries Teodoro, a respectable, orderly pharmacist. Then Vadinho comes back as a ghost,…0
  9. 9Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1982)Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1982)Published 1 Jan 1982Private Ivan Chonkin is a short, clumsy, good-natured Red Army soldier sent to guard a plane that has made a forced landing near a remote village on the eve of the German invasion of 1941. Then everyone forgets about him. He settles in with a local woman, and by the time the authorities remember,…0
  10. 10I Served The King Of England (1971)I Served The King Of England (1971) 8.7/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1971Ditie is a pint-sized hotel waiter with big dreams, and he narrates his rise through ever grander Czech hotels in long, giddy, run-on sentences that feel like a story spun at a bar. The early chapters are pure tall-tale comedy, full of eccentric guests, outrageous banquets and a headwaiter whose…0