The Modern Novel is one of the most impressive book sites on the web, one I’ve followed and learned from for years — and one which too few people seem to know about. It ranks with Michael Orthofer’s The Complete Review in the breadth and depth of its coverage, taking care to include literature from well beyond the literature familiar to even most well-read Anglophones. Its owner, who prefers to remain nameless on the site, describes it as “a personal but extensive survey of literary fiction since around 1900,” and it miraculously manages to be both those thing superbly.
I invited the owner of The Modern Novel to select some of his favorite short novels from the well over 1,000 covered on the site, and he responded with a list that includes a number of books and authors that are probably new to most readers and will, I hope, inspire exploration into unfamiliar but undoubtedly rewarding territories.
Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali, translated by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe (Penguin, 192p.)
• A German translator falls in love with a woman in a painting.
____
The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll, translated by Leila Vennewitz (Penguin et al., 128p.)
• Woman wrongly accused of terrorism by press.
____
Adibas by Zaza Burchuladze, translated by Guram Sanikidze (Dalkey Archive, 113p.)
• A cynical account of contemporary Georgia (the Central Asian one).
____
Commission by Finn Carling, translated by Louis A. Muinzer (Peter Owen, 119p.)
• Solitary English novelist persuaded to a write novel about a young suicide.
____
The Imposter (also published as Thomas the Impostor) by Jean Cocteau, translated by Dorothy Williams (Peter Owen, 131p.)
• A sixteen year old French boy fakes his identity to be become involved in World War I.
____
The Goalkeeper’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick by Peter Handke, translated by Michael Roloff (FSG, 144p.)
• A retired goalkeeper reacts to a crime he has committed.
____
One Hundred Shadows by Hwang Jungeun, translated by Jung Yewon (Tilted Axis Press, 152p.)
• Various Korean characters are haunted by their shadows.
____
The Fall of the Stone City by Ismail Kadare, translated by John Hodgson (Canongate, 173p.)
• The people of an Albanian town wait for two doctors with the same name to argue.
____
Love at Six Thousand Degrees by Maki Kashimada, translated by Hadyn Trowell (Europa Editions, 128p.)
• A Japanese response to Hiroshima mon amour.
____
A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East by László Krasznahorkai, translated by Ottilie Mulzet (New Directions, 144p.)
• The grandson of a medieval Japanese prince comes to modern Hungary to look for a Garden.
____
The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, translated by Joanne Turnbull (NYRB Classics, 144p.)
• Anonymous authors rewrite the classics.
____
Baradla Cave by Eva Švankmajerová, translated by Gwendolyn Albert (Twisted Spoon, 158p.)
• Surrealist novel about a woman and a cave.
____
Sublunar by Harald Voetmann, translated by Johanne Sorgenfri Ottosen (New Directions, 128p.)
• An imaginative, fictionalised account of astronomer Tycho Brahe.
____
The Wild Geese by Mori Ōgai, translated by Kingo Ochiai and Sanford Goldstein (Tuttle Publishing, 160p.)
• The love story of the couple who seem too shy to meet properly.
____
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata, translated by Edward G. Seidensticker (Vintage, 192p.)
• A poetic, understated Japanese love story.
____
Zero Train by Yuri Buida, translated by Oliver Ready (Daedalus, 224p.)
• Children of former prisoners have to ensure a mysterious train runs.
____
Astral Season Beastly Season by Tahi Saihate, translated by Kalau Almony (Honford Star, 144p.)
• A seventeen year old boy, the J-Pop star he loves and a serial killer.
