Michael Henry Heim’s List of Suggested Readings in Twentieth-Century Central
European Prose
Michael Henry Heim is a professor at UCLA and a very respected translator from a number of
languages. Check the editions on our course list and you’ll see his name. Although this list
does not include works from every country in Central Europe, it does point to cultural links
that complicate the “East European” / “West European” dichotomy that became customary
during the Cold War. The list could easily include writers from ethnic minorities in any of
the listed countries, etc. I’ve added a few newer works to this list, since it seems a
good place to put them —- my selections are tagged with (SF) after the titles.
- Jerzy Andrejewski (Poland), Ashes and Diamonds
- Ivo Andrić (Yugoslavia), The Bridge on the Drina
- Thomas Bernhard (Austria), The Lime Works
- Hermann Broch (Austria), The Sleepwalkers, The Death of Virgil
- Elias Canetti (Austria), Auto-da-fe
- Miloš Crnjanski (Yugoslavia), Migrations
- Geza Csath (Hungary), Opium and Other Stories
- Karel Čapek (Czechoslovakia), R. U. R., Tales from Two Pockets,
Apocryphal Stories, Three Novels (Hordubal/An Ordinary
Life/The Meteor), Talks with T. G. Masaryk
- Péter Esterházy (Hungary), Helping Verbs of the Heart
- Witold Gombrowicz (Poland, Argentina, France), Ferdydurke, The
Marriage
- Peter Handke (Austria), The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, A
Sorrow Beyond Dreams, Across
- Jaroslav Hašek (Czechoslovakia), The Good Soldier Švejk
- Vacláv Havel (Czechoslovakia), The Garden Party, The Memorandum,
Temptation
- Bohumil Hrabal (Czechoslovakia), The Death of Mr. Baltisberger, I
Served the King of England, Too Loud a Solitude, Dancing Lessons
for the Advanced in Age
- Franz Kafka (Austria, Czechoslovakia), Stories, The Castle
- Danilo Kiš (Yugoslavia, France), Garden, Ashes, A Tomb for Boris
Davidovich, Encyclopedia of the Dead
- Tadeusz Konwicki (Polish), A Minor Apocalypse, The Polish
Complex
- György Konrad (Hungary), The Case Worker, The City Builder,
The Loser, The Melancholy of Rebirth
- Karl Kraus (Austria), In These Great Times
- Miroslav Krleža (Yugoslavia), The Return of Philip Latinowicz, On the
Edge of Reason
- Milan Kundera (Czechoslovakia, France), The Joke, The Book of Laughter
and Forgetting, Jacques and His Master, The Unbearable Lightness
of Being
- Stanisław Lem (Poland), The Futurological Congress (From the Memoirs of Ijon
Tichy)
- Czesław Miłosz (Poland, USA), The Captive Mind, The Isssa Valley,
Native Realm
- Sławomir Mrożek (Poland), The Elephant, Tango,
Emigrés
- Robert Musil (Austria), The Man Without Qualities
- Istvan Orkeny (Hungary), The Flower Show
- Rainer Maria Rilke (Austria), The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
- Tadeusz Różewicz (Poland), The Card Index, Mariage blanc
- Bruno Schulz (Poland), The Street of Crocodiles, Sanatorium Under the
Sign of the Hourglass
- W. G. Sebald (Germany, United Kingdom), The Emigrants (SF)
- Italo Svevo (Italy), A Life
- Josef Škvorecký (Czechoslovakia), The Cowards, The Miracle Game,
The Engineer of Human Souls
- Dubravka Ugrešić (Yugoslavia), Fording the Stream of Consciousness
- Ludvik Vaculik (Czechoslovakia), The Guinea Pigs
- Vladislav Vancura (Czechoslovakia), The End of the Old Times
- Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Poland), Insatiability
- Christa Wolf (Germany), The Quest for Christa T. (SF)