Classical Studies

Five classic books that started life in another language.

With the upcoming Independent Foreign Fiction Prize winner announcement next month, we thought it ample opportunity to draw your attention to other books in translation.
Here are five classic books that started life in another language, you may have read them or you may have not... but chances are you will have heard of them...

Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes

Penguin Classics

Addled by too many chivalric romances, the ageing Don Quixote resolves to become a knight errant. Setting out on his trusty steed, he employs Sancho Panza as his squire and determines to rescue damsels in distress, slay mighty giants, and...

Read about 'Don Quixote'
Madame Bovary

by Gustave Flaubert

Penguin

Bored and beautiful, Emma Bovary is frustrated by the banality of provincial life in 19th Century France. Her marriage to a mediocre doctor cannot match the glittering, passion-filled romances of the sentimental novels she devours.

Read about 'Madame Bovary'
The Tin Drum

by Günter Grass

Vintage Classics

Oskar Matzerath, inmate in a mental institution, narrates the extraordinary events of his life thus far.

Read about 'The Tin Drum'
One Hundred Years of Solitude

by Gabriel García Marquez

Penguin

A novel that resists all generalisations, the hugely influential and startlingly original One Hundred Years of Solitude helped launch ‘Magical Realism’ and a whole generation of Latin American writers on the international scene.

Read about 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'
Doctor Zhivago

by Boris Pasternak

Vintage Classics

Doctor Zhivago is the epic novel of Russia in the throes of revolution and one of the greatest love stories ever told.

Read about 'Doctor Zhivago'