Sometime within the next few days I’ll finish “Sansibar oder der letzte Grund” by Alfred Andersch as an assignment for a German class, a well-praised work of post-war literature, about five people trying to escape from a small Baltic Sea village in 1937. It’s been excellent so far, and more importantly, it’ll be the first German novel I’ve gotten all the way through! I’ve read long poems and maazines in German, but this is a big step for me and my <i>Deutsch</i>.
What foreign-language books were your “first time”? Were they for class or for pleasure reading?
Carlos Fuentes’ Gringo Viejo (The Old Gringo), about the disappearance of Ambrose Bierce in Mexico. I had taken Spanish before, but hadn’t had to read anything long, so I read it for practice. My dictionary was well worn by the time I finished!
I think it was “arms and the man” by George Bernard Shaw. I really liked it. The first one I finished in portuguese was “O cartomante e otros cuntos” by Machado de Assis.
I can’t remember my first English book [foreign to me] It must have been one by John Dickson Carr. Maybe “The Blind Barber”.
My first German book was “Das Parfum” by Süsskind and I’m trying Gabriël Garcia Marques at the moment, but my Spanish isn’t up to it. Need more lessons. Anyone?
For me, it was Apollonius, Prince of Tyre, though I can’t recall the Latin title. I’ve got a copy of Winnie ille Pu lying around somewhere, too, but I’ve never finished it.
I think everyone who takes French starts with Le Petit Prince; my first “grown-up” French book was L’Etranger. Sadly, it was followed up by the stultifying Eugenie Grandet, and I have loathed Balzac ever since - mainly for ever having existed, but I didn’t like his writing, either :).
He did, however, make a wonderful subject for Rodin: monumental and inanimate.
I just read Clifford Visita el Hospital to the Spanish-speaking kids at the Tompkins County Public Library. I did read a version of Don Quixote but I don’t count it because it was very condensed and “dumbed down” for high school Spanish classes.
It was a short novel for third year Chinese at University by arguably China’s greatest author. It is a piece of art in the original, but the English translation really is not very good.
I believe my first complete novel was Mario Vargas Llosa’s ¿Quién mató a Palomino Molero? for a university class surveying important Latin American novelists.
Which novel are you attempting, daffodil? Both Cien años de soledad and El amor en los tiempos del colera would be serious undertakings. If you want to ease into Garcia Marquez with something short and simple, you might try Crónica de una muerte anunciada.
Lark you think that book is easy? I am argentinian and I found it extremely difficult. Garcia Marquez is always tough, you should start with his articles or with another author
Way back when I took Spanish in high school we read El Sombrero de Tres Picos Can’t remember the author, but the edition was a cheap one, mass produced for high schools, and the intro said three short passages had be cut out to make it more appropriate for our age group… Maybe they did that with an ulterior motive, because first chance I got I went to the public library and got the unexpurgated version, just to see if I was really missing anything.
I had been doing some background reading on Cyrano de Bergerac and wanted to know more about the real Cyrano and the scene that Molière had stolen from him (Rostand alludes to it in Act V scene vi). I went shopping and found a copy of Molière’s play, in French, with the scene stolen from Cyrano’s Le Pédant joué as an appendix.
I was going to try to read a few pages, get hopelessly lost, and quit. Instead I found that I got only a little lost, and with the aid of a dictionary and much reliance on context made it through to the end. Then I got cocky and tried to read L’Autre Monde by Cyrano de Bergerac. I don’t think I finished that one.
