Books We Missed

The Observer ran an interesting list (part 2 available here) over the weekend of overlooked titles—“brilliant but underrated novels that deserve a second chance to shine.”

To compile the list, they asked fifty celebrated writers nominated their favorite books, resulting in an eclectic group of books ranging from long forgotten classics to books that came out just a few years ago and quickly faded away.

It’s worth checking out the entire list, but some of the books included are Julien Green’s Midnight (which John Mortimer describes as having “Kafka-like twists on reality, but it’s Kafka as it might have been if rewritten by Proust”), Alasdair Gray’s Lanark (which is a personal favorite), Hans Fallada’s The Drinker, Victor Serge’s The Case of Comrade Tulayev (which is in print from NYRB), Jose Donoso’s The Obscene Bird of Night, Pierre Guyotat’s Eden Eden Eden, and Tayeb Salih’s A Season of Migration to the North (which was part of the Heinemann “African Writers Series”).

Obviously this list could be expanded, and if anyone has any good suggestions, please post them below. I know Open Letter and a few other publishers are always on the lookout for good reprint recommendations.