Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler

Stayin’ alive in World War II Europe

English spy novelist Eric Ambler is one of the most respected authors in the history of the genre. His novel Journey into Fear was published in 1940. The story takes place at that present time, when World War II is underway in Europe. An Englishman named Graham works as an engineer for a British arms manufacturer and travels frequently for business. He has recently completed some work in Turkey and is scheduled to depart for England the following day. On his last night in Istanbul, Graham spends the evening in a nightclub with Kopeikin, a Turkish coworker. There he strikes up a friendship with an attractive dancer and also notices a suspicious man who seems to be watching him all evening. At the end of the night, when Graham returns to his hotel room, he is startled at finding someone in his room, hidden in the dark. The mysterious stranger fires three shots at Graham, one of which grazes his hand. The would-be killer then flees out the window into the darkness.

Colonel Haki, the head of the Turkish secret police, shows up to investigate. (Haki also appeared in Ambler’s previous novel, A Coffin for Dimitrios.) Haki informs Graham that he is a target for assassination by German spies. Because of his occupation, Graham holds vital information in his head pertaining to the improvement of Turkey’s naval defenses. Killing Graham would delay those improvements for several weeks, allowing enough time for the Nazis launch an invasion of Turkey. It is imperative that Graham return safely to London, not only to save his own life but also to protect Turkey and prevent a Nazi victory over the Allies. Haki and Kopeikin change Graham’s travel plans and sneak him onto a small ship leaving Turkey for Genoa, Italy. There are about a dozen passengers on the boat, all of whom the reader becomes well-acquainted with. Although no one was supposed to know that Graham was traveling on this particular ship, he soon finds that the secret has apparently gotten out, and he is in danger of being murdered by one of his fellow passengers.

Ambler writes very realistic spy thrillers, without any pulp-fiction heroics. What makes this story compelling is that Graham acts in a realistic way to the threats he faces, and nothing happens that’s beyond the realm of reason. Nowadays, nearly every spy thriller involves potential world domination or nuclear armageddon, and every crime film is about a serial killer or a mass murder. When this novel was written, however, around the time Alfred Hitchcock made Foreign Correspondent, the killing of one person was still considered shocking and terrifying. When reading Journey into Fear, the reader lives vicariously through Graham, imagining what you would do if your own life were similarly placed in jeopardy. Graham is by no means an action hero, but he has enough courage to keep his wits about him and employ his brains for self-preservation.

Though this intimacy of scale is refreshing, for those of us raised on those James Bondish armageddon spy thrillers, it can also feel slow-paced and at times less than thrilling. Journey into Fear was adapted into a 1943 film, and the story is just right for a movie of roughly an hour and a half in length. When you spend a few days reading the book, however, it feels less than satisfying when the 270-page read is wrapped up with a climactic scene that lasts about all of two pages. That adds up to a lot of conversations with Graham’s fellow passengers that one has to sit through just for a small payoff of exciting action. Nevertheless, Ambler’s realistic style makes his espionage thrillers worthwhile. Because the reader can identify with Graham, and the perils he faces are credible, his fear and anxiety are palpably felt.

Understanding History and Other Essays by Bertrand Russell

Three unrelated articles from the 1940s

British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell won the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature, back when philosophers used to be considered for that award. Understanding History and Other Essays was originally published in 1957 by the Philosophical Library, whose books have been recently rereleased as ebooks by Open Road Media. This volume consists of three of Russell’s previously published essays: “How to Read and Understand History” (1943), “The Value of Free Thought” (1944), and “Mentalism vs. Materialism” (1945). I believe the first two essays were originally published as Little Blue Books by the Haldeman-Julius publishing company. “Mentalism vs. Materialism” is from The Rationalist Annual of 1945. Although the history essay is the title selection, I was attracted more by the subject matter of the latter two essays.

The essay “How to Read and Understand History” is nothing special, probably because Russell is not a historian. He starts by stating that a study of history is useless to most people’s daily lives, and the only reason to read history is if you simply enjoy doing so. He briefly discusses the works of some notable historians, such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, and a few modern scholars. Russell criticizes philosophers like Hegel and Marx who attempt to come up with a unified theory of history, characterizing them as “mythologizers,” and offers some thoughts on how he thinks history should be written and taught.

In “The Value of Free Thought,” Russell begins by defining what exactly is “free thought.” The term is not synonymous with atheism or agnosticism, as some might think, but rather with scepticism. A freethinker can believe whatever he chooses to believe, but to be a freethinker, that choice must be based on evidence and rational inquiry. The antithesis of free thought, as Russell asserts, would be William James’s argument: Why not believe in religion when believing is more convenient, comfortable, and who’s to say you’re wrong? Russell goes on to critique religion because of its denial of rational inquiry. Like many atheist writers (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens), Russell sometimes lapses into smugness. I agree with the message, but not always the tone. Also, if you’re already a free thinker, then this primer on free thought tells you much of what you already know. Overall, however, “The Value of Free Thought” is a good concise manifesto of sorts for the modern freethinker.

“Mentalism vs. Materialism” is exactly what it sounds, contrasting dualism (matter and mind or spirit) with monism (just matter). Russell, as one might expect, is on the side of the materialists, or “physicalists,” the label he prefers. He starts with an explanation of physics that is forgivably outdated and unforgivably confusing. Once he gets into the epistemology of consciousness, however, his argument is well-stated. This essay is very brief, only about half the length of either of the other two selections.

I bought this ebook as a Kindle Daily Deal. Whenever possible, I look over the table of contents before I purchase an ebook. In this case, the table of contents makes it look like there are 18 essays in this ebook. In fact, however, there are only three, the longest of which is maybe a 45-minute read. The remaining 15 lines of the table of contents are just subheads within the last essay. Open Road could have done a better job formatting that. Had I paid more than a couple bucks for this ebook, I would have been a little disgruntled by the discrepancy between what I thought I was buying and what I actually got. Given that these writings are not in the public domain, a few bucks for a few essays is reasonable. These are not earth-shatteringly revolutionary essays, but those sympathetic to Russell’s atheist, materialist, and skeptical views will appreciate his eloquent and intelligently reasoned discourses.

Essays in this collection

How to Read and Understand History

The Value of Free Thought

Mentalism vs. Materialism

Beasts, Men, and Gods by Ferdynand Ossendowski

War memoir and Mongolian travelogue

Ferdynand Ossendowski (1876–1945) was a Polish scientist, explorer, and political activist who led a complicated and adventurous life. He was born in what is now Latvia. Sometime around his teen years, he moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, with his father. He taught science courses at a university in Tomsk and traveled to many different parts of Asia. Around 1905, he was sentenced to death for organizing communist activities in opposition to the tsar, but his sentence was commuted, and after some years of hard labor, he was released. Much like the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror that followed, the Russian Revolutions of 1917 were followed by a period of political extremism, persecution, and executions. This led to the Russian Civil War, in which Ossendowski fought on the side of the Whites (conservative nationalists) against the Reds (Bolsheviks, Communists, Soviets). In 1920, Ossendowski was living in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. This is where his memoir Beasts, Men, and Gods begins. The Bolsheviks consider him a counterrevolutionary and set out to capture and likely execute him. Ossendowski gets wind of their coming, however, and escapes. He decides to flee Russia through Mongolia, hoping to eventually reach a port city where he can emigrate to a safe place in Western Europe.

The danger doesn’t end, however, when Ossendowski crosses into Mongolia. Whites and Reds are active on that side of the border as well, where the Mongolians are also fighting for their independence from Chinese occupation. Ossendowski joins up with a band of Whites consisting of other “foreigners” (Ossendowski identifies as a Pole) who, while still hoping to make their exit from the region, engage in military battles against the Reds and Chinese. The landscape is littered with corpses, and torture and atrocities are ubiquitous. In an environment of rampant paranoia where spies are found everywhere, Ossendowski is equally in danger of being killed by White officers who suspect him of leaning towards the Reds.

Beasts, Men, and Gods was published in 1922. While Ossendowski’s life was certainly exciting, the way he tells his story here does not make for easy reading. This account reads as if it were written for an Eastern European audience who would have been intimately familiar with the events of the Russian Civil War. To those not in the know, the text often reads like a confusing barrage of unfamiliar proper nouns: geographical place names, various Red and White factions, government agencies and military units, the names of Russian generals, and various Chinese and Mongolian ethnic groups. At times it’s difficult to keep straight which groups are fighting for which side. In order to fully appreciate this book, I think I would first have to read a comprehensive overview of the Russian Civil War and another volume on the history of Mongolia.

While the war narrative is difficult to get through, the book is more successful as a study of Mongolian culture. While in Mongolia, Ossendowski spent much time in Buddhist monasteries. He met the Living Buddha, the highest Buddhist personage in Mongolia, distinct from the Dalai Lama in Tibet. The most vividly drawn character in the book is the White general Baron Ungern von Sternberg (1886–1921), a German aristocrat who has “gone native” and embraced the Buddhist religion. Ossendowski himself does not profess to having adopted Buddhism, but he relates Buddhist teachings and history with respect and an attention to detail. Fortune telling was a common practice in Mongolia, and Ossendowski writes about prophecies as if they were real and accurate. After the travel narrative ends, another eight chapters are solely devoted to the religion, myths, and legends of Mongolian Buddhism. As Beasts, Men, and Gods progresses, and becomes less about Russia and more about Mongolia, I found it more interesting and accessible. I felt lost for much of the first half of Ossendowski’s memoir, but I came to like it more towards the end.

The Great Divide: Nature and Human Nature in the Old World and the New by Peter Watson

Long-lost cousins with vastly different upbringings

When Europeans first discovered the Americas, it was the meeting of two vastly different cultures, two populations that were entirely alien to one another. In his 2012 book, The Great Divide, British intellectual historian Peter Watson investigates how and why the peoples of the Old and New Worlds developed so differently. Watson makes the case that differing environmental conditions in the two hemispheres—climate, topography, flora and fauna—forged two diverging trajectories of civilization and culture. In The Great Divide, he has compiled compelling evidence to that effect into a sweeping overview of human history. Some factors that he considers are the role that natural disasters played in the creation of gods and religions, how different flora and fauna affected the rates at which agriculture and cities developed, how the use of psychotropic plants influenced cultural ideologies, and why was human sacrifice such a widespread practice in the Americas?

As I’ve come to learn from previously reading his books Ideas and The Modern Mind, Watson is a master generalist who can pull together concepts and data from a wide variety of fields in the sciences, humanities, and the arts and unify them into a remarkably cohesive whole. The Great Divide, however, is pretty much all about archeology, anthropology, and paleontology. I thought this book would have something to say about the cultures of the Old World and the New after the first transatlantic contact, but with the exception of some brief coverage of the Spanish Conquest, it is entirely concerned with events prior to 1492. Watson’s investigation begins with the dawn of humans and spends a lot of time in the Ice Age. Socrates, Buddha, and Confucius don’t show up until chapter 18, and the Spaniards don’t reach America until the 23rd and final chapter. The Great Divide is basically a comprehensive summary of world archaeology, as much as we knew in 2012. I enjoy reading about archaeology, but because I read quite a bit on that subject, a lot of this was review for me. Nevertheless, as is always the case with Watson’s books, he enriches the general narrative with plenty of interesting facts and connections that will be new and intriguing to most general readers.

If the purpose of this book is to compare and contrast the pre-1492 trajectories of the Old and New Worlds, it is not entirely successful. Watson presents a few chapters on the history of the Old World, followed by a couple chapters on the history of the New World, and back and forth, and back and forth. Only in the conclusion of the book, when recapping all the evidence presented, does Watson really take the time to make side-by-side comparisons between the two domains and draw generalizations and theories from their differences. The two hemispheres, not surprisingly, do not get equal time and consideration. It seems like the book is about two-thirds Old World and one-third New World, simply because there’s so much more pre-16th-century information available on Eurasia than there is on the Americas.

The Great Divide is an excellent synthesis of human history that draws interesting parallels and deviations between the peoples of the Eastern and Western hemispheres. This book will not, however, captivate the general reader to the same extent as Charles Mann’s excellent 1491 or perhaps Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (which I haven’t read, but it was a popular bestseller). Although Watson does generate similar wow-factor by delivering insightful revelations to curious readers, The Great Divide has more of a textbook execution to it, rather than the more investigative science journalism feel of Mann’s work. Notwithstanding, if you are at all interested in the ancient history of world cultures, this book’s breadth and depth make it a must-read.

The ebook claims that an Appendix 2 is available online at the Harper Collins website, but it’s not there, and that’s really annoying.  

Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian

An aimless wanderer (or two) in Southwest China

Chinese-French writer Gao Xingjian won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in China in 1940, emigrated to France in 1997, and writes in the Chinese language. His novel Soul Mountain was published in 1990.

An unnamed writer of literature has gotten into trouble with the authorities in Beijing for the controversial content of his writings. He leaves the capital and takes an extended journey out west to Sichuan, sometimes venturing over the border into Tibet and other surrounding areas. He lived in this region when he was younger, so he knows much of the local history and folklore. This writer tells the people he meets that he’s looking for material for an upcoming literary work, but that really just seems like an excuse for him to do some soul searching. He gravitates towards remnants of pre-modern China—old-growth forests, isolated Daoist temples, and lonely mountaintops—and he searches for a legendary location called Lingshan (Soul Mountain). Along the way he meets a woman, also a solo traveler, and they become romantically, or at least sexually, involved. Actually, there is more than one woman over the course of the book, but there seems to be one who predominates over the others. It’s unclear what this woman is doing while he’s off visiting historical and archaeological sites. Is she just waiting in the hotel for him to return? Or, perhaps, are the chapters arranged in nonchronological order?

One of the annoying aspects of Soul Mountain is that none of the characters have names. At times, stories are related in which historical and mythical personages are named, but no one in the primary present-tense narrative has a name, just “the woman,” “the lawyer,” “my friend,” etc. Even more frustrating is the way that Gao switches the narration from first-person to second-person seemingly indiscriminately. The protagonist is known only as “I” or “you.” Later in the book there’s a “he,” and I don’t know who the hell was supposed to be the antecedent for that pronoun.

The summary above is how I read the novel, but I found out afterwards from Wikipedia that “I” and “you” are supposed to be two different characters, and Soul Mountain is actually two novels intertwined. If I have to find that out from Wikipedia, then the author hasn’t done his job very well. In chapter 72, Gao breaks the fourth wall and briefly touches upon his use of pronouns, but it’s the very definition of too little, too late. I think most people reading Soul Mountain (in its English translation, at least) would interpret the book exactly as I did.

The novel is set in the 1980s. The Cultural Revolution in China was over by then, but it is mentioned frequently by the characters as a recent memory. Soul Mountain is critical of many aspects of life under Chinese Communism—restrictions of civil liberties, unwieldy bureaucracy, degradation of the environment, censorship of literature and journalism, cruel and unusual punishment, and more. I liked Soul Mountain for what it taught me about China. It functions as an insider’s travelogue to this region of China during a certain period in history, but I could have probably gotten the same experience from a Lonely Planet guidebook or some travel memoir. I enjoyed the travel chapters much more than the chapters that chronicle the relations between the writer and his female partner(s). The sex scenes are off-putting, not because of any graphic sexual content but because of the odd and disturbing conversations they have. As a fictional narrative, there isn’t much of a novel here at all, just a collection of scenes. At first, it seems as if an actual story will be told, but as the book progresses it gets more abstract until Gao is just writing down seemingly random thoughts. I didn’t care about the characters, who never seemed to develop or progress or learn anything over time.

Of Love and Dust by Ernest J. Gaines

African-American novel of Southern racial realism

Ernest J. Gaines is an African-American writer known for his novels The Autobiography of Jane Pittman and the Oprah’s Book Club selection A Lesson Before Dying, both of which were made into Emmy-winning TV movies. Gaines, the recipient of many literary awards and honorary doctorates, was born to a sharecropping family on a Louisiana plantation. His 1967 novel Of Love and Dust, is set on a plantation outside Baton Rouge in the 1940s.

Though slavery in the American South officially ended roughly four score years prior to the time of this story, the Hebert Plantation employs many Black laborers through debt bondage, a system of indentured servitude very similar to slavery. Marshall Hebert, the current owner, also acquires workers from the local prisons. A young Black man named Marcus Payne is sent to jail for murdering another young Black man in a barfight. Marshall buys Marcus’s bond, releasing him from incarceration. In exchange, Marshall gets five years of plantation labor out of Marcus. Marcus is a proud man with a chip on his shoulder who refuses to bow down to White men in power. He insists it’s only a matter of time before he escapes the plantation and runs to freedom. As a result of his cockiness and insubordination, Marcus draws the ire of the Cajun overseer, Sydney Bonbon, who works Marcus harder than the other workers in an attempt to break his spirit. The novel is narrated by James Kelly, a Black man and veteran worker on the Hebert Plantation who “onboards” Marcus into the plantation workforce, acts as his supervisor during the farm work, and looks after him in off hours. Kelly and Marcus develop a relationship that’s part friendly and part adversarial.

There ends up being more love than dust in this novel. That is to say, it starts out as a muckraking exposé about the exploitation of agricultural laborers, but it soon turns into a story more about the racial politics of love and sex. In 1940s Louisiana, White man and Black woman is OK, as long as nobody talks about it. Black man and White woman, however, is not only frowned upon but also possibly a capital offense for the Black man involved.

Gaines has written Of Love and Dust in a very down-to-earth realist style, with little modernist experimentation. Much like the writing of John Steinbeck, it is modern in the sense that it deals with the modern world, modern themes, and modern psychology, but the prose is straightforward and not in any way linguistically opaque like William Faulkner’s depictions of the South. This is not a simple black-and-white tale of violence and oppression between overseers and enslaved. There are complex motivations here and some sly scheming going on as characters, both Black and White, jockey for an advantage in this power struggle. At times the plot twists, as well as the cleverly written but period-realistic dialogue, reminded me of an Elmore Leonard novel.

Of Love and Dust has a problem with its pacing. The middle portion of the novel is rather drawn-out and repetitive, to the point where the reader is ready to say, “OK, I get it. Let’s move on.” The ending, however, feels rushed and crammed into the last ten pages. Suspense builds to the point where the reader has a right to expect an epic confrontation, but what’s delivered doesn’t quite live up to expectations. But that’s realism. A more thrilling conclusion might have put this novel into the realm of a potboiler or adventure story when it really belongs more in the domain of tragedy. The slice of history depicted here deserves more than a formulaic story of villains and victims, and Gaines commendably delivers something much more nuanced, complex, and authentic.

Old Books by (Mostly) Dead Nobel Laureates 2025

Congratulations to László Krasznahorkai!

It’s that time of year again when Old Books by Dead Guys congratulates the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and celebrates Nobel laureates of the past. It was announced this morning that Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai has won the 2025 prize. Every year at this time, we present the ever-growing cumulative list of works by Nobel laureates that have been reviewed at this blog. New authors added to the list this year are Germany’s Thomas Mann, Hungary’s Imre Kertesz, and Elias Canetti representing both Bulgaria and the United Kingdom. In addition, I've added new entries from Gabriel García Márquez, Camilo José Cela, and José Saramago, and I continue to chip away at the complete works of Eugene O’Neill, Hermann Hesse, and John Steinbeck. Check out the authors below and click on the titles to read the complete reviews.

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1903 Nobel) Norway 🇳🇴

• Arne: A Sketch of Norwegian Country Life (1859) - 3 stars
• A Happy Boy (1860) - 4.5 stars
• “The Father” (1860) in Stories by Foreign Authors: Scandinavian (1898) - 4.5 stars
• “The Railroad and the Churchyard” (1882) in Stories by Foreign Authors: Scandinavian (1898) - 4.5 stars
• Absolom’s Hair (English edition, 1908) - 3 stars

Henryk Sienkiewicz (1905 Nobel) Poland 🇵🇱

• In Vain (1876) - 2.5 stars
• “The Light-House Keeper of Aspinwall” (1881) in Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish, Greek, Belgian, Hungarian (1898) - 4.5 stars
• Without Dogma (1891) - 4 stars
• “Bartek the Conqueror” (1882) in Tales by Polish Authors (1915) - 5 stars
• With Fire and Sword (1884) - 4 stars
• The Deluge (1886) - 5 stars
• Pan Michael (1888) - 5 stars
• Lillian Morris and Other Stories (1894) - 4 stars
• Quo Vadis (1895) - 4.5 stars
• Children of the Soil (1895) - 1 star
• Hania (1897) - 2.5 stars
• Sielanka: An Idyll (1898) - 4 stars
• So Runs the World (1898) - 2.5 stars
• Life and Death and Other Legends and Stories (1904) - 3.5 stars
• On the Field of Glory (1906) - 3 stars
• In Desert and Wilderness (1911) - 2.5 stars

Rudyard Kipling (1907 Nobel) United Kingdom (born in India) 🇬🇧

• “The Man Who Would Be King” (1888) in Stories by English Authors: The Orient (1896) - 2 stars
• “The Courting of Dinah Shadd” (1890) in International Short Stories: English (1910) - 1 star
• Kim (1901) - 2 stars

Selma Lagerlöf (1909 Nobel) Sweden 🇸🇪

• The Treasure (1903) - 5 stars

Paul von Heyse (1910 Nobel) Germany 🇩🇪

• “The Fury” (1853) in Stories by Foreign Authors: German I (1898) - 2.5 stars
• Children of the World (1873) - 4.5 stars

Maurice Maeterlinck (1911 Nobel) Belgium 🇧🇪

• “The Massacre of the Innocents” (1886) in Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish, Greek, Belgian, Hungarian (1898) - 5 stars
• Wisdom and Destiny (1898) - 2.5 stars
• Death (1911) - 4.5 stars

Gerhart Hauptmann (1912 Nobel) Germany 🇩🇪

• Atlantis (1912) - 2.5 stars

Rabindranath Tagore (1913 Nobel) India 🇮🇳

• Mashi and Other Stories (1918) - 3.5 stars

Romain Rolland (1915 Nobel) France 🇫🇷

• Jean-Christophe, Volume 1: Dawn, Morning, Youth, Revolt (1911) - 4.5 stars
• Jean-Christophe, Volume 2: The Marketplace, Antoinette, The House ( 1911) - 3 stars
• Jean-Christophe, Volume 3: Love and Friendship, The Burning Bush, The New Dawn (1912) - 2.5 stars
• Pierre and Luce (1920) - 4 stars

Verner von Heidenstam (1916 Nobel) Sweden 🇸🇪

• The Soothsayer (1919) - 2.5 stars
• The Birth of God (1920) - 2 stars

Henrik Pontoppidan (1917 Nobel) Denmark 🇩🇰

• Emmanuel, or Children of the Soil (English edition, 1896) - 4.5 stars

Carl Spitteler (1919 Nobel) Switzerland 🇨🇭

• Two Little Misogynists (1907) - 3 stars

Knut Hamsun (1920 Nobel) Norway 🇳🇴

• Hunger (1890) - 3.5 stars
• Shallow Soil (1893) - 4.5 stars
• Pan (1894) - 4 stars
• Victoria (1898) - 4 stars
• Under the Autumn Star (1906) - 4 stars
• A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings (1909) - 4 stars
• Look Back on Happiness (1912) - 2.5 stars
• Growth of the Soil (1917) - 5 stars

Anatole France (1921 Nobel) France 🇫🇷

• The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881) - 5 stars
• “The Juggler of Notre Dame” (1892) in Stories by Foreign Authors: French I (1898) - 4 stars
• The Gods Are Athirst (1912) - 3 stars

Wladyslaw Reymont (1924 Nobel) Poland 🇵🇱

• The Comedienne (1896) - 3 stars
• The Promised Land (1899) - 4 stars
• “In the Old Town at Lodz” (1899) in Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse - 4.5 stars
• The Peasants (1904-1909) - 5 stars
• “The Trial” in More Tales by Polish Authors (1916) - 4.5 stars
• “A Polish Scene” in Selected Polish Tales (1921) - 3 stars
• “Death” in Selected Polish Tales (1921) - 2 stars

George Benard Shaw (1925 Nobel) Ireland 🇮🇪

“The Miraculous Revenge” in Little Blue Book No. 215 (ca. 1923) - 1.5 stars

Henri Bergson (1927 Nobel) France 🇫🇷

• An Introduction to Metaphysics (1903) - 2 stars

Sigrid Undset (1928 Nobel) Norway 🇳🇴

• Jenny (1911) - 2.5 stars

Thomas Mann (1929 Nobel) Germany 🇩🇪

• Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories (1930) - 1.5 stars

Sinclair Lewis (1930 Nobel) United States of America 🇺🇸

• Free Air (1919) - 2.5 stars
• Main Street (1920) - 3 stars
• Babbitt (1922) - 4.5 stars
• It Can’t Happen Here (1935) - 3.5 stars

John Galsworthy (1932 Nobel) United Kingdom 🇬🇧

• The Man of Property (1906) - 3 stars
• “Buttercup Night” (1914) in Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories (1918) - 4 stars

Ivan Bunin (1933 Nobel) France (born in Russia) 🇫🇷 🇷🇺

• The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories (1922) - 4.5 stars

Luigi Pirandello (1934 Nobel) Italy 🇮🇹

• Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) - 2 stars

Eugene O’Neill (1936 Nobel) United States of America 🇺🇸

• Bread and Butter (1914) - 2 stars
• Servitude (1914) - 2 stars
• The Personal Equation (1915) - 3 stars
• Now I Ask You (1916) - 2.5 stars
• “Tomorrow” (1917) - 4 stars
• The Straw (1919) - 2 stars
• Beyond the Horizon (1920) - 3.5 stars
• Gold (1920) - 3 stars
• Anna Christie (1921) - 4.5 stars
• Diff’rent (1921) - 3.5 stars
• The First Man (1922) - 3 stars
• The Hairy Ape (1922) - 4 stars
• Welded (1924) - 1 star
• All God’s Chillun Got Wings (1924) - 2.5 stars
• Desire Under the Elms (1924) - 3 stars
• Lazarus Laughed (1925) - 2 stars
• The Fountain (1926) - 3.5 stars
• The Great God Brown (1926) - 2 stars
• Marco Millions (1927) - 2.5 stars
• The One-Act Plays of Eugene O’Neill (1914–1941) - 3 stars

Pearl S. Buck (1938 Nobel) United States of America (raised in China) 🇺🇸

• East Wind, West Wind (1930) - 3 stars
• The Good Earth (1931) - 5 stars
• Sons (1933) - 4 stars
• A House Divided (1935)- 4.5 stars
• This Proud Heart (1938) - 2 stars
• Other Gods (1940) - 3 stars
• Dragon Seed (1942) - 4 stars
• The Promise (1943) - 4 stars
• China Flight (1943) - 3.5 stars
• The Townsman (1945) - 2 stars
• Peony (1948) - 4 stars
• Command the Morning (1959) - 4.5 stars
• The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea (1963) - 3 stars
• Death in the Castle (1965) - 2 stars

Frans Eemil Sillanpää (1939 Nobel) Finland 🇫🇮

• People in the Summer Night (1934) - 4 stars

Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (1944 Nobel) Denmark 🇩🇰

• Fire and Ice (The Long Journey, Volume 1) (1908-1922) - 5 stars
• The Cimbrians (The Long Journey, Volume 2) (1908-1922) - 5 stars
• Christopher Columbus (The Long Journey, Volume 3) (1908-1922) - 5 stars

Hermann Hesse (1946 Nobel) Switzerland (born in Germany) 🇨🇭 🇩🇪

• Peter Camenzind (1904) - 3.5 stars
• Beneath the Wheel (1906) - 3 stars
• Gertrude (1910) - 4 stars
• Rosshalde (1914) - 3 stars
• Knulp (1915) - 4.5 stars
• Demian (1919) - 3 stars
• Strange News from Another Star (1919) - 4 stars
• Klingsor’s Last Summer (1920) - 3.5 stars
• Siddhartha (1922) - 4 stars
• Steppenwolf (1927) - 4.5 stars
• Narcissus and Goldmund (1930) - 4 stars
• The Journey to the East (1932) - 1.5 stars
• The Glass Bead Game (1943) - 3.5 stars
• Stories of Five Decades (1972) - 4 stars
• The Fiction of Hermann Hesse (an overview)

Bertrand Russell (1950 Nobel) United Kingdom 🇬🇧

• The Problems of Philosophy (1912) - 5 stars
• Proposed Roads to Freedom (1918) - 4 stars
• The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell (1940) by George Santayana - 2.5 stars

Pär Lagerkvist (1951 Nobel) Sweden 🇸🇪

• Barabbas (1950) - 4 stars

François Mauriac (1952 Nobel) France 🇫🇷

• The Kiss to the Leper (1922) - 4 stars

Ernest Hemingway (1954 Nobel) United States of America 🇺🇸

• The Sun Also Rises (1926) - 3.5 stars
• A Farewell to Arms (1929) - 3.5 stars
• For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) - 3.5 stars

Halldór Laxness (1955 Nobel) Iceland 🇮🇸

• “New Iceland” (1927) in Seven Icelandic Short Stories (1961) - 4.5 stars
• The Atom Station (1948) - 2 stars

Albert Camus (1957 Nobel) France (born in Algeria) 🇫🇷

• The Stranger (1942) - 5 stars
• The Plague (1947) - 3.5 stars

Borris Pasternak (1958 Nobel) Russia (Soviet Union) 🇷🇺

• Doctor Zhivago (1957) - 4 stars

John Steinbeck (1962 Nobel) United States of America 🇺🇸

• To a God Unknown (1933) - 2 stars
• The Harvest Gypsies (1936) - 4 stars
• In Dubious Battle (1936) - 3.5 stars
• Of Mice and Men (1937)- 4.5 stars
• The Long Valley (1938) - 4.5 stars
• The Grapes of Wrath (1939) - 5 stars
• Cannery Row (1945) - 3.5 stars
• The Wayward Bus (1947) - 4.5 stars
• The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951) - 3.5 stars

Mikhail Sholokhov (1965 Nobel) Soviet Union 🇷🇺

• And Quiet Flows the Don (1932) - 5 stars
• The Don Flows Home to the Sea (1940) - 5 stars
• Early Stories (1966) - 4 stars

Samuel Beckett (1969 Nobel) Ireland 🇮🇪

• The Collected Shorter Plays (1984) - 2.5 stars

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn (1970 Nobel) Soviet Union 🇷🇺

• In the First Circle (1968) - 3.5 stars

Miguel Ángel Asturias (1974 Nobel) Guatemala 🇬🇹

• Men of Maize (1949) - 3.5 stars

Elias Canetti (1981 Nobel) Bulgaria/United Kingdom 🇧🇬 🇬🇧

• Auto-da-Fé (1935) - 1 star

Gabriel García Marquez (1982 Nobel) Colombia 🇨🇴

• One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) - 3.5 stars
• Collected Novellas (1981) - 3.5 stars
• Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004) - 2 stars

William Golding (1983 Nobel) United Kingdom 🇬🇧

• Lord of the Flies (1954) - 3 stars

Wole Soyinka (1986 Nobel) Nigeria 🇳🇬

• The Interpreters (1965) - 2 stars

Camilo José Cela (1989 Nobel) Spain 🇪🇸

• The Family of Pascual Duarte (1942) - 4.5 stars
• The Hive (1950) - 3.5 stars

Octavio Paz (1990 Nobel) Mexico 🇲🇽

• The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico (1950) - 4 stars

José Saramago (1998 Nobel) Portugal 🇵🇹

• Blindness (1995) - 5 stars
• The Cave (2000) - 3.5 stars

Günter Grass (1999 Nobel) Germany 🇩🇪

• The Tin Drum (1959) - 1.5 stars

Imre Kertész (2002 Nobel) Hungary 🇭🇺

• Fatelessness (1975) - 4 stars

Orhan Pamuk (2006 Nobel) Turkey 🇹🇷

• Snow (2002) - 3.5 stars

Mario Vargas Llosa (2010 Nobel) Peru 🇵🇪

• The Storyteller (1987) - 3.5 stars
• The Feast of the Goat (2000) - 4.5 stars

Mo Yan (2012 Nobel) China 🇨🇳

• Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (2006) - 4 stars

Patrick Modiano (2014 Nobel) France 🇫🇷

• Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas (2014) - 3 stars

Bob Dylan (2016 Nobel) United States of America 🇺🇸

• Chronicles: Volume One (2004) - 4 stars
• The Songs He Didn’t Write: Bob Dylan Under the Influence (2008) by Derek Barker - 5 stars
• Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown (2011) by David Yaffe - 3 stars
• Dylan: Disc by Disc (2015) by John Bream - 4.5 stars
• Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track (2015) by Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon - 4 stars
• Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews (2017), edited by Jonathan Cott - 4 stars
• Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life (2017) by Scott M. Marshall - 4.5 stars

Olga Tokarczuk (2018 Nobel) Poland 🇵🇱

• Flights (2007) - 3.5 stars
  
• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009) - 3.5 stars