Zeit Literaturkanon

This is one of the 759 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
4508 The Book about Blanche and Marie Per Olov Enquist 2004 Swedish Swedish
1704 Celestial Harmonies Peter Esterhazy 2000 Hungarian Hungarian
2489 Measuring the World Daniel Kehlmann 2005 German German
8091 Paris Nocturne Patrick Modiano 2003 French French
4502 Parallel Stories Péter Nádas 2005 Hungarian Hungarian
3287 Three Strong Women Marie NDiaye 2009 French French
1538 Snow Orhan Pamuk 2002 Turkish Turkish
221 White Teeth Zadie Smith 2000 British English
6169 The Tower Uwe Tellkamp 2008 German German
1456 Flights Olga Tokarczuk 2007 Polish Polish
5409 Melancholy Jon Fosse 1995 Norwegian Norwegian
657 The Elementary Particles Michel Houellebecq 1998 French French
7108 The Children Of The Dead Elfriede Jelinek 2024 Austrian German
7016 Original Bliss A. L. Kennedy 1997 British English
452 A Heart So White Javier Marias 1992 Spanish Spanish
1748 The Fox Was Ever The Hunter Herta Müller 1992 German German
971 The Discovery of Heaven Harry Mulisch 1992 Dutch Dutch
2115 All Souls' Day Cees Nooteboom 1998 Dutch Dutch
1344 The Emigrants W. G. Sebald 1992 German German
7016 Dukla Andrzej Stasiuk 1997 Polish Polish
869 Woodcutters Thomas Bernhard 1984 Austrian German
2010 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
545 The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie Agota Kristof 1986 Hungarian French
99 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
3479 The Use Of Man Aleksandar Tišma 1976 Serbian Serbo-croatian
1694 Cassandra Christa Wolf 1983 German German
1942 The Land At The End Of The World António Lobo Antunes 1979 Portuguese Portuguese
915 Malina Ingeborg Bachmann 1971 Austrian German
202 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 1972 Italian Italian
2406 A Sorrow Beyond Dreams Peter Handke 1972 Austrian German
566 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
329 History Elsa Morante 1974 Italian Italian
5438 Communism In Spain In The Franco Era Jorge Semprún 1980 Spanish Spanish
206 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
1708 The Clown Heinrich Böll 1963 German German
4287 Gantenbein Max Frisch 1964 Swiss German
1631 Acquainted With Grief Carlo Emilio Gadda 1963 Italian Italian
4120 Voices In The Evening Natalia Ginzburg 1961 Italian Italian
4120 Each Man In His Darkness Julien Green 1960 French French
4120 Life's Good, Brother Nâzim Hikmet 1962 Turkish Turkish
327 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
650 The Flanders Road Claude Simon 1960 French French
568 The Mandarins Simone de Beauvoir 1954 French French
326 The Unnamable Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
1199 This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen Tadeusz Borowski 1947 Polish Polish
836 Second Thoughts Michel Butor 1957 French French
1175 The Demons Heimito von Doderer 1956 Austrian German
52 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
1724 Logbook George Seferis 1940 Greek Greek
56 The Leopard Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958 Italian Italian
430 The Bridge on the Drina Ivo Andrić 1945 Bosnian Serbo-croatian
76 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
2935 On Overgrown Paths Knut Hamsun 1949 Norwegian Norwegian
2088 A German Officer in Occupied Paris Ernst Jünger 1949 German German
126 If This Is a Man Primo Levi 1947 Italian Italian
63 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry 1947 British English
706 The Skin Curzio Malaparte 1949 Italian Italian
135 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
1568 The Beautiful Summer Cesare Pavese 1949 Italian Italian