Zeit Literaturkanon

This is one of the 743 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

https://www.librarything.com/award/335/ZEIT-Literaturkanon, 70 Books

The ZEIT Literaturkanon is a curated list of 70 European novels published between 1945 and 2009, assembled in 2012 for a seven-part summer series in the German weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT. Conceived by literary editor Iris Radisch, its purpose was to spotlight the most artistically and historically significant works of the post-war era—ten titles for each decade—to prompt debate and guide readers rather than to rank “the best” by popularity. Selection was not opened to public voting; instead, roughly 30 prominent critics and cultural journalists from DIE ZEIT’s circle each championed one or more books in short essays that were later collected in the volume Kontinent der Bücher (2013).

This list was originally published in 2012 and was added to this site about 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
4502 The Book about Blanche and Marie Per Olov Enquist 2004 Swedish Swedish
1702 Celestial Harmonies Peter Esterhazy 2000 Hungarian Hungarian
2483 Measuring the World Daniel Kehlmann 2005 German German
8076 Paris Nocturne Patrick Modiano 2003 French French
4496 Parallel Stories Péter Nádas 2005 Hungarian Hungarian
3280 Three Strong Women Marie NDiaye 2009 French French
1536 Snow Orhan Pamuk 2002 Turkish Turkish
221 White Teeth Zadie Smith 2000 British English
6158 The Tower Uwe Tellkamp 2008 German German
1456 Flights Olga Tokarczuk 2007 Polish Polish
5398 Melancholy Jon Fosse 1995 Norwegian Norwegian
656 The Elementary Particles Michel Houellebecq 1998 French French
7095 The Children Of The Dead Elfriede Jelinek 2024 Austrian German
7004 Original Bliss A. L. Kennedy 1997 British English
451 A Heart So White Javier Marias 1992 Spanish Spanish
1746 The Fox Was Ever The Hunter Herta Müller 1992 German German
970 The Discovery of Heaven Harry Mulisch 1992 Dutch Dutch
2108 All Souls' Day Cees Nooteboom 1998 Dutch Dutch
1342 The Emigrants W. G. Sebald 1992 German German
7004 Dukla Andrzej Stasiuk 1997 Polish Polish
869 Woodcutters Thomas Bernhard 1984 Austrian German
2004 The War Marguerite Duras 1985 French French
114 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
577 Anniversaries Uwe Johnson 1970 German German
544 The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie Agota Kristof 1986 Hungarian French
101 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
200 The Book of Disquiet Fernando Pessoa 1982 Portuguese Portuguese
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
3475 The Use Of Man Aleksandar Tišma 1976 Serbian Serbo-croatian
1692 Cassandra Christa Wolf 1983 German German
2700 The Land At The End Of The World António Lobo Antunes 1979 Portuguese Portuguese
914 Malina Ingeborg Bachmann 1971 Austrian German
202 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 1972 Italian Italian
2398 A Sorrow Beyond Dreams Peter Handke 1972 Austrian German
565 I Served The King Of England Bohumil Hrabal 1983 Czech Czech
477 Fateless or Fatelessness Imre Kertész 1975 Hungarian Hungarian
959 A Tomb for Boris Davidovich Danilo Kiš 1976 Serbian Serbo-croatian
328 History Elsa Morante 1974 Italian Italian
5428 Communism In Spain In The Franco Era Jorge Semprún 1980 Spanish Spanish
206 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
1715 The Clown Heinrich Böll 1963 German German
4281 Gantenbein Max Frisch 1964 Swiss German
1629 Acquainted With Grief Carlo Emilio Gadda 1963 Italian Italian
4114 Voices In The Evening Natalia Ginzburg 1961 Italian Italian
4114 Each Man In His Darkness Julien Green 1960 French French
4114 Life's Good, Brother Nâzim Hikmet 1962 Turkish Turkish
325 Solaris Stanislaw Lem 1961 Polish Polish
61 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
403 The Words Jean Paul Sartre 1963 French French
645 The Flanders Road Claude Simon 1960 French French
566 The Mandarins Simone de Beauvoir 1954 French French
324 The Unnamable Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
1197 This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen Tadeusz Borowski 1947 Polish Polish
836 Second Thoughts Michel Butor 1957 French French
1174 The Demons Heimito von Doderer 1956 Austrian German
50 Lord of the Flies William Golding 1954 British English
91 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
112 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
1723 Logbook George Seferis 1940 Greek Greek
56 The Leopard Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958 Italian Italian
428 The Bridge on the Drina Ivo Andrić 1945 Bosnian Serbo-croatian
77 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
2927 On Overgrown Paths Knut Hamsun 1949 Norwegian Norwegian
2082 A German Officer in Occupied Paris Ernst Jünger 1949 German German
125 If This Is a Man Primo Levi 1947 Italian Italian
62 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry 1947 British English
706 The Skin Curzio Malaparte 1949 Italian Italian
134 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
1566 The Beautiful Summer Cesare Pavese 1949 Italian Italian