Best Foreign Work of Fiction Chosen by Francophone Writers

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

French literary magazine Transfuge, 132 Books

The French literary magazine Transfuge asked a group of francophone writers to pick their best foreign work of fiction.

The authors polled are: Pierre Assouline, Frédéric Beigbeder, Nina Bouraoui, Michel Butor, Eric Chevillard, Claro, Charles Dantzig, Jacques Darras, Florence Delay, Jean-Paul Dubois, Eric Faye, Alain Finkielkraut, Eric Fottorino, Jérôme Garcin, Régis Jauffret, Jacques Julliard, Philippe Labro, Linda Lê, Gilles Lipovetsky, Richard Morgiève, Marie Ndiaye, Claude Pirotte, Lydie Salvayre, Jean-François Sirinelli, Alain-Gérard Slama, Phillipe Sollers, Tzvetan Todorov, Michel Tournier

This list was originally published in 2006 and was added to this site over 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
63 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry 1947 British English
1492 The Real Life of Sebastian Knight Vladimir Nabokov 1941 Russian English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
380 American Pastoral Philip Roth 1997 American English
94 Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872 Russian Russian
1747 Twenty Four Hours In The Life Of A Woman Stefan Zweig 1927 Austrian German
3161 Weights And Measures Joseph Roth 1937 Austrian German
25 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
208 A Good Man Is Hard to Find Flannery O'Connor 1953 American English
7164 A Million Little Pieces James Frey 2003 American English
855 A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway 1964 American English
1189 A Writer's Diary Virginia Woolf 1953 British English
360 Ada or Ardor Vladimir Nabokov 1969 American English
751 All the Pretty Horses Cormac McCarthy 1992 American English
1025 Ambiguous Adventure Cheikh Hamidou Kane 1961 Senegalese French
3828 Bacacay Witold Gombrowicz 1957 Polish Polish
1436 Letters to a Young Poet Rainer Maria Rilke 1929 Austrian German
1946 A Burnt Child Stig Dagerman 1948 Swedish Swedish
90 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 German German
819 Burmese Days George Orwell 1934 British English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
1411 Concrete Thomas Bernhard 1982 Austrian German
147 Confessions of Zeno Italo Svevo 1923 Italian Italian
5289 Cutting It Short Bohumil Hrabal 1976 Czech Czech
348 The Glass Bead Game Hermann Hesse 1943 German German
47 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English
3389 Death Of A Red Heroine Qiu Xiaolong 2000 Chinese English
82 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
975 The Reader Bernhard Schlink 1995 German German
255 Disgrace J. M. Coetzee 1999 South African English
135 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
5601 Doruntine Ismail Kadare 1980 Albanian Albanian
4763 Metropole Ferenc Karinthy 1970 Hungarian Hungarian
2210 Exemplary Stories Miguel de Cervantes 1613 Spanish Spanish
96 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
384 Ferdydurke Witold Gombrowicz 1937 Polish Polish
45 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
988 Flaubert's Parrot Julian Barnes 1984 British English
711 Flowers for Algernon Daniel Keyes 1959 American English
3224 Forever Flowing Vasily Grossman 1970 Russian Russian
254 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 1973 American English
875 Greguerias Ramón Gómez de la Serna 1910 Spanish Spanish
1116 Hadrian the Seventh Frederick Rolfe 1904 British English
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
445 I'm Not Stiller Max Frisch 1954 Swiss German
3630 I And My Chimney Herman Melville 1856 American English
3312 Into The Heart Of Borneo Redmond O'Hanlon 1984 British English
5602 Jar City Arnaldur Indriðason 2000 Icelandic Icelandic
5334 Jernigan David Gates 1991 American English
5290 Revenge Yōko Ogawa 1998 Japanese Japanese
799 Kaputt Curzio Malaparte 1944 Italian Italian
2385 Less Than Zero Bret Easton Ellis 1985 American English
1967 Leviathan Arno Schmidt 1949 German German
214 Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 1980 Russian Russian
3630 Life Of Quintus Fixlein Jean-Paul Richter 1796 German German
181 Light in August William Faulkner 1932 American English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
137 Lord Jim Joseph Conrad 1900 British English
166 Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez 1985 Colombian Spanish
2407 Lust Elfriede Jelinek 1989 Austrian German
651 Manhattan Transfer John Dos Passos 1925 American English
1426 Mars Fritz Zorn 1977 Swiss German
66 The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka 1915 Czech German
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
5233 Mouth Full Of Earth Branimir Scepanovic 1975 Montenegrin Serbo-croatian
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
5807 Mysterious Skin Scott Heim 1995 American English
2739 My Friend Flicka Mary O'Hara 1941 American English
4500 Night Visitor B. Traven 1966 German Unknown
194 Oblomov Ivan Goncharov 1859 Russian Russian
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
148 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1962 Russian Russian
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
2226 Operation Shylock Philip Roth 1993 American English
1607 Pan Knut Hamsun 1894 Norwegian Norwegian
3075 Patrimony Philip Roth 1991 American English
124 Pedro Páramo Juan Rulfo 1955 Mexican Spanish
241 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
73 The Portrait of a Lady Henry James 1881 American English
7830 Purple America Rick Moody 1997 American English
784 Rabbit at Rest John Updike 1990 American English
3630 Really The Blues Bernard Wolfe, Milton Mezz Mezzrow 1946 American English
535 Red Cavalry Isaac Babel 1926 Russian Russian
1729 Requiem for a Dream Hubert Selby 1978 American English
69 Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 1719 British English
554 Satyricon Petronius 65 Roman Latin
2582 Scenes From The Life Of A Faun Arno Schmidt 1953 German German
5496 Signs Of Fire Jorge de Sena 1979 Portuguese Portuguese
1538 Snow Orhan Pamuk 2002 Turkish Turkish
171 Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse 1927 German German
6085 Sundog Jim Harrison 1984 American English
2531 The Anatomy Lesson Philip Roth 1983 American English
943 The Bacchae Euripides -405 Greek Ancient greek
120 The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler 1939 American English
310 Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987 American English
2352 The Box Man Kobo Abé 1973 Japanese Japanese
4946 The Breast Philip Roth 1972 American English
1113 The Christmas Oratorio Göran Tunström 1983 Swedish Swedish
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
2064 The Egghead Republic Arno Schmidt 1957 German German
1218 The Egyptian Mika Waltari 1945 Finnish Finnish
4615 The Fifth Woman Henning Mankell 1996 Swedish Swedish
335 The Garden of the Finzi-Continis Giorgio Bassani 1962 Italian Italian
359 The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy 1997 Indian English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
3630 The Happy Island Dawn Powell 1938 American English
420 The Human Stain Philip Roth 2000 American English
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
56 The Leopard Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958 Italian Italian
630 The Swindler Francisco de Quevedo 1626 Spanish Spanish
259 Naked Lunch William S. Burroughs 1959 American English
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
1135 The Tunnel Ernesto Sábato 1948 Argentinian Spanish
89 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
865 The Pillow Book Sei Shōnagon 1002 Japanese Japanese
422 Ramayana Valmiki -200 Indian Sanskrit