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1
Death and the Penguin (1999)
Published
An obituary writer in Kyiv comes home to a pet penguin while the people he’s writing about start to die. Come for a crime story with a deadpan sense of humor. Stay for what happens when the quietest presence in Viktor’s life is the one creature he trusts. Translated by George Bird.
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Too loud a solitude (1990)
10.0/10on Open Library
Published
Haňťa works a paper press in Prague and rescues books from the waste he’s meant to crush. You can read this short novel quickly, though it’s worth lingering over the way one voice can turn a basement full of paper into a whole life. Translated from Czech by Michael Henry Heim.
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The door (1994)
8.9/10on Open Library
Published
Emerence runs the household of a writer named Magda with complete authority. At Emerence’s own door, even her closest relations are kept out. Choose this Hungarian novel for a friendship that keeps asking when an act of care becomes an intrusion. Translated by Len Rix.
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Válka s mloky (1936)
8.0/10on Open Library
Published
In War with the Newts, an intelligent species of giant salamander turns up on an Indonesian island, and humanity sees business opportunities. Choose this Czech satire if you enjoy grand ideas delivered with a straight face. This edition was translated by M. Weatherall and R. Weatherall.
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Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych (2009)
8.3/10on Open Library
Published
In Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Janina Duszejko reads horoscopes and pays close attention to the animals around her village in Poland. A string of deaths puts her ideas to a test. Read for a narrator whose peculiar ways of paying attention matter as much as the mystery. Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
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Time Shelter - a Novel (2022)
7.0/10on Open Library
Published
A clinic in Zurich recreates a different decade on each floor so patients can enter rooms that fit their memories. Start here for an idea that feels kind on the scale of one person’s childhood bedroom and unnerving when nostalgia becomes a public project. Translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel.
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Baga Jaga je snijela jaje (2005)
8.0/10on Open Library
Published
In Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, the witch from Slavic folklore becomes a way to look at aging. The book changes form as it goes, moving among a daughter’s account of her mother, a spa adventure, and an annotated guide to the myth. Choose it if you like books that can be affectionate and unruly in the same breath. Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać, Celia Hawkesworth, and Mark Thompson.
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Angel Dinner (2026)
Published
Angel hunters and traveling healers turn up in these short stories by the Transylvanian writer Ilka Papp-Zakor. Pick the collection if you like a folktale that can unsettle you in a few pages. The small towns and forests feel recognizable for just long enough that a turn into the fantastic can catch you off guard. Translated from Hungarian by Tímea Sipos.
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Mees, kes teadis ussisõnu (2015)
7.0/10on Open Library
Published
In The Man Who Spoke Snakish, a boy in a fantastical medieval Estonia can speak a language that lets him command animals. As more people leave the forest for villages, speaking it becomes an increasingly lonely thing. Start here for a fable with the nerve to make a loss funny, strange, and painful at once. Translated from Estonian by Christopher Moseley.
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Journey by moonlight (2001)
2.0/10on Open Library
Published
A separation at an Italian train station sends Mihály wandering on his honeymoon. Choose this Hungarian novel for the peculiar mood of a person traveling forward through Italy while drifting backward into memories of youth. Translated by Len Rix.
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Hazarski rečnik (1984)
8.4/10on Open Library
Published
In Dictionary of the Khazars, the fragments come arranged as entries in a lexicon. Accounts of the Khazars sit alongside each other, with contradictions for the reader to chase. Pick it if you like opening a novel in the middle and following a connection just to see where it goes. Translated by Christina Pribićević-Zorić.
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Rivers of Babylon (1991)
Published
In a Bratislava hotel, the man who runs the boiler finds that supplying heat gives him leverage. Choose this Slovak satire for the ugly comedy of a minor job turning into a source of power. It has a much sharper edge than its hotel setting first suggests. Translated by Peter Petro.
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The Palace of Dreams (1993)
7.0/10on Open Library
Published
An empire has an office that collects and interprets its subjects’ dreams. When Mark-Alem takes a job there, even a stranger’s dream starts to look like it could put his own family in danger. Choose this Albanian novel for the chill of a fantastical idea carried out through office routine. Barbara Bray translated the novel into English from Jusuf Vrioni’s French version of the Albanian original.
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Figa (2016)
Published
In The Fig Tree, Jadran tries to understand why his partner left by looking at the departures and silences in the generations before him. Read this Slovenian novel for the way a marriage and a family history slowly bring each other into focus. Translated by Olivia Hellewell.
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Solenoid (2015)
9.0/10on Open Library
Published
A diarist’s account of daily life in late communist Romania lets in an anti-death protest movement and an excursion into the tiny world of a microscope slide. This is the long, demanding choice if you want the rules of an ordinary life to change gradually around you. Translated from Romanian by Sean Cotter.
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