List of my favourite 50 literary works:
1. Henry Miller, "Tropic of Capricorn"
2. Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass" (poetry)
3. Arno Schmidt, "Zettels Traum" ("Zettel's Dream")
4. William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
5. Friedrich Nietzsche, "Die fröhliche Wissenschaft" ("The Gay
Science")
6. Hermann Hesse, "Klingsors letzter Sommer" ("Klingsor's Last Summer")
7. Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
8. Franz Kafka, "Der Prozeß" ("The Trial")
9. Gottfried Benn, "Spät" ("Late", poetry-cycle)
10. Julio Cortázar, "Rayuela" ("Hopscotch")
11. Hermann Hesse, "Steppenwolf"
12. Nikos Kazantzakis, "Zorba the Greek"
13. Arno Schmidt, "Kosmas"
14. Henry Miller, "The Colossus of Maroussi"
15. Friedrich Nietzsche, "Die Sonne sinkt" ("The Sun Goes Down", poem)
16. Thomas Mann, "Der Zauberberg" ("The Magic Mountain")
17. James Joyce, "Ulysses"
18. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "One Hundred Years of Solitude"
19. Hermann Hesse, "Siddharta"
20. Franz Kafka, "In der Strafkolonie" ("The Penal Colony")
21. Fjodor Dostoevsky, "Crime and Punishment"
22. Homer, "Odyssee"
23. Jean-Paul Sartre, "The Words"
24. Robert Musil, "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" ("The Man without Qualities")
25. Henry Miller, "Tropic of Cancer"
26. Edgar Allan Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher"
27. Arno Schmidt, "Kaff"
28. Albert Camus, "The Plague"
29. Keri Hulme, "The Bone People"
30. Eduard Mörike, "Peregrina" (poetry-cycle)
31. Hermann Hesse, "Demian"
32. Karen Blixen, "The Monkey" (story)
33. Nikos Kazantzakis, "Report to Greco"
34. Flann O'Brien, "At Swim-Two-Birds"
35. Aischylus, "Oresteia"
36. Johann Wolfgang v. Goethe, "Faust I"
37. Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
38. Lawrence Sterne, "Tristram Shandy"
39. Milan Kundera, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"
40. Karen Blixen, "Out of Africa"
41. Sappho, "Ode to Aphrodite" (poem)
42. Sophocles, "Oedipus the King"
43. William S. Burroughs, "Naked Lunch"
44. Jean Paul, "Siebenkäs"
45. Albert Camus, "The Fall"
46. Günter Grass, "Die Blechtrommel" ("The Tin-Drum")
47. Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness"
48. Alfred Döblin, "Berlin Alexanderplatz"
49. Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations"
50. Arno Schmidt, "Die Gelehrtenrepublik" ("The Republic of Scholars")
my favourite literary discoveries 2000:
- Nick Hornby, "High Fidelity" and "Fever Pitch" (music,
soccer, cool humour - books for people
grown up in the Seventies, that means for people like me)
- Curzio Malaparte, "The Skin" (expressionistic autobiographic
novel about World War II)
- Bret Easton Ellis, "American Psycho" (only for readers with
strong nerves, shocking, but nevertheless a convincing social criticism)
- Michel Butor, "The Timeplan" (french 'novel roman' from 1956,
a fascinating literary labyrinth, a meta-novel which deconstructs itself
- no easy reading, but I love it)
my favourite literary discoveries 2001:
- Fjodor Dostoevsky, "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants"
(an early novel by Dostoevsky, not famous, but a fine psychological study)
- William H. Gass, "How to Make a World of Words" (essays about
writers and writing)
- Ersi Sotiropoulos, "Bitter Oranges" (thank you, Maria!)
currently on my reading-table:
- Henry Fielding, "Tom Jones" (no book about the singer, but an english 18th-century-novel)
- R.Haller/F.Stadler, "Ernst Mach. Werk und Wirkung" (about the almost forgotten philosopher of science Ernst Mach)
- William Wordsworth, "The Poetical Works" (for my daily dose
of poetry)
... have I missed something? - Then send me an E-mail --