The Double Traitor by E. Phillips Oppenheim

Less-than-credible spy novel set at the outbreak of World War I

British writer E. Phillips Oppenheim was one of the most popular authors of spy thriller novels in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His novel The Double Traitor was published in 1915. Since the story deals with the outbreak of World War I in Europe, it was a very timely fictionalization of current events. Even before the Great War, Oppenheim was writing novels about evil German spies working to infiltrate, invade, and conquer England. This trend in his work increased in frequency and intensity once the Germans declared war in 1914.

Francis Norgate is an English diplomat in Berlin. In a night club one evening, he gets into an argument with a boorish Prussian prince over a woman they are both wooing. The next day, Norgate finds himself relieved of his position,. The Kaiser, apparently a friend of the offended prince, has requested the diplomat’s ejection form Germany. The disgruntled Norgate returns to London for a leave of absence until he is assigned to a different embassy. On his way home, he shares a train compartment with a fellow passenger: Mr. Selingman, a German manufacturer of crockery. Over the course of the journey, Norgate learns that Selingman runs a German spy network in England. Upon his arrival in London, Norgate reports this to his superiors in the British government and to Scotland Yard, but no one will listen to him. The idea of Germany inciting a war with Britain is regarded as a ludicrous. Norgate, therefore, decides to take matters into his own hands and infiltrate Selingman’s spy ring by posing as a traitor to his country.

I previously read an Oppenheim novel entitled Havoc, published in 1911, in which he predicted the coming world war. The Double Traitor is less impressive because it merely relates events after the fact. A Bosnian Serb anarchist assassinates the Austrian archduke. Austria declares war on Serbia, with the support of Germany. Russia comes to the defense of Serbia. France, an ally of Russia, joins in. Germany invades Belgium. Then England enters the war. That’s the way things happened in the real world, and that’s the way they happen in Oppenheim’s novel. In The Double Traitor, Oppenheim proposes that the entire chain of events was calculated by Germany (as represented here by Selingman) as an excuse to declare war on England and conquer the British Isles.

Even if you agree with Oppenheim on that assertion, The Double Traitor often strains believability. The manner in which Norgate first learns about the German plot is too easy and convenient. The gullibility of Selingman in taking Norgate under his wing does not ring true. Norgate going undercover in a German spy ring, without any authorization from the British government, would make him a real traitor in the eyes of the law, not a fake one. The cluelessness of everyone but Norgate as to the intentions of Germany also seems a disingenuous fallacy designed to amplify Norgate’s heroism. Nevertheless, if you’re willing to suspend disbelief, this is a brisk and catchy read. One must have a high tolerance, however, for snooty aristocrats, Norgate included, whose main concern in life is who they dine with and where on any given night. The gentlemanly priggishness and feminine haughtiness that Oppenheim thought was so cool in the Victorian Era is quite grating in hindsight.

When all is said and done, it is difficult to see what Norgate really accomplished. World War I proceeded nonetheless, despite his spy-busting efforts. In fact, he knew about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand beforehand and did nothing to stop it. Oh well, if you don’t think too hard, you just might find yourself enjoying this fluffy potboiler of international intrigue.

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Green Mansions by W. H. Hudson

Edenic romance in the jungles of Guyana

William Henry Hudson (1841-1922) was a naturalist, ornithologist, and a writer of fiction. (In his books, his name is often abbreviated to W. H. Hudson.) His parents were English and Irish immigrants to the United States, but he was born in Argentina and lived most of his adult life in England. His novel Green Mansions was published in London in 1904.

In a brief prologue, an unnamed narrator (presumably Hudson himself?) explains that the following story was told to him by a friend, a Venezuelan man named Abel. Decades earlier, Abel was the son of a wealthy family of Caracas. Having made enemies through some of his political activities, he flees impending arrest and ventures into the wilderness, heading towards Guyana. He settles with a tribe of Indians in their remote village. Venturing into the forests on hunting expeditions and nature walks, he discovers an area where the Indians fear to go. There he hears a strange voice in the air in a language he doesn’t understand, yet it somehow directs his actions nonetheless. Soon he discovers the voice belongs to a mysterious girl named Rima who lives in the forest and communes with the woodland creatures.

Like many a Victorian romance written by a male author, Green Mansions wreaks of sexual fantasy. It seems like every adventure writer of that era wanted to fall in love with a 17-year-old girl with the mind of an 11-year-old. Rima’s childlike innocence only makes today’s reader question Abel’s intentions. Rima is described as a white woman from some mysterious lost race. Even though Abel is a Latino, Hudson just couldn’t see his English and American readers fantasizing about a romantic heroine who was anything but light-skinned and potentially European. The description of Native Americans in the book seems ethnographically realistic but socially derogatory as they are shown as shifty, superstitious, and usually villainous.

I previously read Hudson’s novel A Crystal Age, a utopian story set in a future England. That was a pretty terrible book, and Green Mansions is quite an improvement. As they say, write what you know. Having worked as a naturalist and ornithologist in Patagonia for many years, Hudson demonstrates a great knowledge of and sensitivity toward the natural environment, flora, and fauna of South America. His nature writing is really the best aspect of Green Mansions. Hudson capably brings the setting vividly to life. The wilds where Abel and Rima dwell are depicted as idyllic, as befitting any romance, but not idealized to the point of defying natural realism. Amid this well-drawn environment, Hudson enacts an operatic melodrama but one that isn’t overly bogged down in Victorian clichés. Though the story is predictable at times, the ending is truly a surprise, and Hudson deserves credit for not settling for the easy way out.

The main problem with Green Mansions is that large passages of it are rather uneventful exercises in needless verbosity. Before anything of import happens, too much time is spent merely wandering around in the jungle. Hudson de-emphasizes the struggle for survival on a daily basis that such a lifestyle would entail, in favor of a too leisurely romance. Much ink is spent on Abel’s interior monologue as he contemplates, overanalyzes, and repeatedly describes his love for Rima. Even when the characters embark on a quest, it’s pretty much a waste of time. Nevertheless, Hudson manages to craft a love story sufficiently different from his Victorian contemporaries to be memorable. Green Mansions sometimes bored me, but I did enjoy Hudson’s scientifically realistic depictions of nature, drawn from his first-hand knowledge of South America.

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The Red Republic by Robert W. Chambers

Biased, myopic novel of the Paris Commune

The Paris Commune of 1871 is unofficially the fourth French Revolution, following the Revolutions of 1793, 1830, and 1848. Probably due to its short duration, it is more commonly referred to as a rebellion or failed revolt. A cadre of working-class radicals seized control of Paris, drove the official Third Republic government out of town, and established their own revolutionary government in the capital city. This historic event provides the narrative foundation for the novel The Red Republic, published in 1895, by American author Robert W. Chambers, probably best known for his book of horror stories The King in Yellow.

Philip Landes is an American studying art in Paris. He is not a starving artist, however, but rather inexplicably wealthy, and seems never to have worked a day in his life. While socializing in a cafe with friends, he runs afoul of some boorish ruffians. Landes is then contacted by some out-of-town visitors, the father and sister of a deceased friend, asking for his assistance in depositing a fortune in diamonds into a Parisian bank. When would-be diamond thieves kill the father and kidnap the daughter, Landes suspects those same good-for-nothing ruffians with whom he clashed in the first chapter. Before he can set things right, however, the Commune seizes control of Paris, armed conflict breaks out in the streets, and noble citizens are rounded up in droves to be shot. Wouldn’t you know it, some of the leaders of the Commune just happen to be those same thieves and scoundrels that Landes is pursuing, thus making him a man marked for death.

The period of violent class struggle that took place in France from the late 18th to the late 19th century is a fascinating era in European history that has made for some great literature. French authors have written many memorable novels set during the French Revolutions, most of them sympathetic to the working class and Republican left (the works of Balzac being an exception). British authors, on the other hand, tend to side with the monarchy and the aristocracy. The American Chambers, however, makes those Brits look positively liberal by comparison. Chambers has no sympathy for the working class whatsoever. They are merely rabble and trash who should be bowing to the authority of gentlemen. The Communards are depicted as thugs, thieves, and sadists, the motivation for their coup being the furtherance of their criminal activity. In Chambers’s view, the political basis for the Commune is irrelevant and therefore not discussed.

Amid this biased view of the revolt, Chambers sets a rather hokey romantic melodrama. Long passages of the novel are spent among lovers lounging and flirting in a luxurious apartment while war rages outside. The plot is a meandering and disorganized series of captures and escapes. Though Chambers is obsessed with the variety of military uniforms, which he constantly describes, his confusing prose sometimes makes it hard to tell who is fighting on which side. Chambers makes little attempt to educate the reader. He writes as if his audience already knows every detail of this conflict, every minor historical personage, and every street in Paris. That’s excusable for a French author, but for an American, it just seems like a snooty way of saying “Anyone who’s anyone, myself included, studied in Paris.” A few real people from history appear in the book, like Adolph Thiers and Raoul Rigault, leaders of the Third Republic and the Commune, respectively. Mostly, however, the cast of characters consists of a jumble of nondescript dandies and cartoonish villains whose only distinguishing characteristics are their surnames. The best thing this novel has to offer are a few isolated scenes of shockingly gory warfare.

The best novel about the Paris Commune is Emile Zola’s The Debacle (a.k.a. The Downfall), published in 1892. In terms of historical realism and just general literary intelligence, it makes The Red Republic seem like a children’s book by comparison.
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Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jacques Bonnet

A not very informative rattling off of titles and authors

If you are an avid reader who seeks out and collects books, or at least collects the experience of reading them, then you may find yourself seeking out books about books. One prominent subgenre within that sphere is the book collector’s memoir, of which there are many. Phantoms on the Bookshelves, originally published in 2008, is one such book collector’s memoir written by French bibliophile Jacques Bonnet. Memoirs of this type are usually written by collectors of rare and antiquarian volumes who spend a lot of money acquiring volumes to establish a library specializing in a particular subject, time period, genre, or author. Bonnet, on the other hand, considers himself a general reader and a general collector. The only requirement for a book to be added to his collection is that he might want to look at it someday. His all-encompassing love for books has resulted in a personal library of 20,000 volumes that he stores in his home. In Phantoms on the Bookshelves, Bonnet tells the reader what it’s like to own so many books, where they all come from, how he organizes his shelves, and other matters of interest to fellow bibliophiles.

Most of the book’s text consists of Bonnet bragging about his book collection, which would be fine—that’s common for these book collector memoirs—if his bragging would only teach us something about the books themselves. Instead of selecting some of his prized possessions and telling us what’s interesting about them, Bonnet just rattles off a rapid-fire stream of titles and authors. What he tells you about the books in his collection isn’t even substantial enough to be called trivia. In the back of this book is a bibliography of all the books Bonnet mentions in Phantoms on the Bookshelves. You might as well just read that, because it’s more informative than Bonnet’s prose. The most educational chapter is the book’s last, in which he discusses other people’s libraries, library fires, and book burnings.

Also typical of this genre, Bonnet talks a lot about how great reading is. As someone who loves to read, the last thing I want to read about is the pleasure of reading. Tell me something I don’t know. The text of Phantoms of the Bookshelves is sprinkled with many quotes about books and reading. If you wanted that, you could buy entire books filled with such quotes. Bonnet also hauls out the overused truism about how the internet is a useful tool, but nothing compares to the smell and feel of an actual printed book. Anyone who is enough of a bibliophile to want to read about someone else’s book collection will find such discussions generic and elementary.

What I like about Bonnet’s memoir is that you can tell he’s a reader. He buys books for their content, not for their publication history, elaborate bindings, or monetary value. In fact, he confesses that he freely writes in his books, thus depreciating their resale value. As a general reader and collector myself (though nowhere near Bonnet’s 20,000 volumes), I enjoyed his unapologetic pride in reading whatever he wants and purchasing hundreds of books he’ll probably never read, just because he likes living with them. As I read Phantoms on the Bookshelves, I felt an affinity for him as a fellow book lover, but I found myself constantly wishing that what he was telling me could be less rambling and more educational.
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Theodore Savage: A Story of the Past or the Future by Cicely Hamilton

A bleakly realistic apocalypse from the interwar period

If you read a lot of early science fiction, you come across many novels about the end of the world, its desolate aftermath, or the dystopian society that arises in its wake. While these books often make for fascinating reading, many of the futuristic fictions from over a century ago come across as tame, silly, or misguided in their depiction of the terrors of Armageddon. Not so with Theodore Savage, an apocalyptic novel by English writer, actress, and feminist Cicely Hamilton (1872–1952), published in 1922. For a novel written a century ago, this remarkable work of science fiction is surprisingly realistic and relentlessly bleak.

Compared to the scientific romances of the Victorian era, it was much easier for writers to conjure up images of mankind’s destruction and downfall after having lived through the horrors of World War I. In Theodore Savage, the apocalypse is triggered neither by an environmental catastrophe (as in After London by Richard Jefferies, 1885, or The Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiell, 1901), nor a threat from space (Omega by Camille Flammarion, 1893, or The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1912), nor an epidemic (The Last Man by Mary Shelley, 1826, or The Scarlet Plague by Jack London, 1912). The cause of the apocalypse in Hamilton’s novel is war, plain and simple. Mankind is responsible for its own destruction. A political crisis referred to as “the Karthanian imbroglio” sparks a world war. Airstrikes and gas attacks not only kill thousands but also spawn countless displaced persons who wander the countryside, desperate for food and shelter. Governments collapse. Millions die of starvation. A mild-mannered civil servant from London, Theodore Savage, is one of the survivors left to eke out a primitive existence amid the ruins of civilization.

Hamilton doesn’t pull any punches with her depiction of this non-nuclear Armageddon or its aftermath. Free from Victorian-era prudery, she does not shy away from scenes of brutality, such as people tearing each other to pieces over a morsel of food. Nor does she deny the likelihood of (gasp) extramarital sex. Still, there were limits in 1922. The neo-primitive lifestyle that she depicts stops just short of cannibalism. Overall, the world war and post-apocalyptic future that Hamilton renders is strikingly realistic. People behave the way human beings might actually behave under such harsh and extreme circumstances. Hamilton makes no concessions to an overly romanticized faith in humanity, as was often the case with earlier apocalyptic fiction. Theodore Savage reads as surprisingly contemporary. It calls to mind the recent television series The Last of Us and The Walking Dead, but without the zombies. No zombies are needed when animalistic man is portrayed in such bleak and brutal terms.

The philosophical subtext that underlies this dystopian story is one of scientific ethics. How far should mankind dare to venture in the pursuit of scientific knowledge before he ends up like Icarus flying too close to the sun? A cult of anti-intellectualism arises amid the fallout of civilization’s collapse. Hamilton manages to both condone and condemn a stance of voluntary ignorance in a way that allows the reader to weigh both sides of the issue. In the final chapter, Hamilton delivers somewhat of a sermon, spelling out her theories that the characters have acted out in the preceding story. I don’t agree with everything she has to say in this sermon, but I’m willing to forgive it because the book she built around those ideas is so well-written, thought-provoking, and compelling. Theodore Savage does not deserve the obscurity into which it has faded. More so than many better-known books by bigger sci-fi names, this novel can still move today’s reader and still has important points to make.
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Rambles in Yucatan by Benjamin Moore Norman

A supercilious American looks at Mayan Mexico

Benjamin Moore Norman was a book dealer in New York and New Orleans before he took up writing. He was somehow associated with the explorer and writer John Lloyd Stephens, who traveled to the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico in the early 1840s to study the Mayan culture. Inspired by Stephens, Norman made his own expedition to the Yucatan, which resulted in his book Rambles in Yucatan. Norman’s and Stephens’s books on the Yucatan were both published in 1843. Regardless of who published first, it is the consensus among informed readers that Stephens’s book is the better of the two.

Norman is to be commended for his adventurousness in journeying to territory far off the beaten path, but his narrative of the trip is nothing to rave about. Rather than displaying the rugged adaptability of an explorer, Norman takes a very condescending attitude towards his Mexican hosts and constantly complains about the squalid accommodations he is forced to endure. He demonstrates very little respect for the present-day Indigenous Mexicans, repeatedly portraying them as lazy, stupid, or shifty. In the cities of Mérida, Valladolid, and Campeche, he mostly stays with Mexicans of Spanish descent, whom he doesn’t always depict in a flattering light either. One humorous episode finds Norman lodging in a monastery, where one of the monks offers him a whip, which he declines. The monks then blow out all the candles and flog themselves for 15 minutes while Norman can only sit there in the dark and listen.

Despite looking down on 19th-century Mexicans, Norman expresses much admiration for their ancestors, the ancient Maya. He recounts his visits to the ruins of Chichén Itzá, Kabah, and Uxmal. These sites were largely unexcavated at the time and covered with much vegetation, but apparently still quite impressive to behold. Norman makes himself out to be the first White man to visit Chichén Itzá, but his description of the archaeological sites he visited are rather rudimentary, mostly consisting of measurements of the buildings and brief descriptions of their sculptural elements. The book does, however, include a few helpful illustrations. Norman speculates on the uses of the buildings, and at one point describes as a “temple” what we clearly know today to be a ball court. The book ends with a series of appendices that summarize the knowledge of the region that was available at the time, compiled from the writings of others. The best of it is taken from Alexander von Humboldt; the worst of it is pure fiction. Norman repeatedly proposes that Indigenous Americans are the descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel, or immigrants from Egypt or China. He just can’t bring himself to give a bunch of Indians credit for creating their own advanced civilization.

One word that Norman frequently uses that may confuse the reader is “sonato” or “sonata” (His spelling is inconsistent). What he’s really talking about are cenotes, the sinkholes frequently found in the limestone bedrock of the Yucatan. Filled with clear water, these cenotes are not only geological curiosities but also often popular swimming holes for locals and tourists alike.

I made my own rambles in the Yucatan decades ago, and I enjoyed reading Norman’s descriptions of what sites I visited were like in an earlier era. Personally, it’s hard for me not to enjoy a travel book about Mexico. Norman, however, was really just a dilettante in the areas of Mexican history and archaeology. Even in his day, there were better books on the subject, including Stephens’s Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatán (1843), and Frederick Catherwood’s Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (1844).
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Old Books by (Mostly) Dead Nobel Laureates 2023

Congratulations to Jon Fosse!

Author and playwright Jon Fosse of Norway has been announced as the winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature. Every year at this time Old Books by Dead Guys presents the ever-growing cumulative list of works by Nobel laureates that have been reviewed at this blog. To be honest, not much has changed since last year, but we still take this opportunity to highlight these Nobel authors and their works. 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
• 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
• “In the Old Town at Lodz” 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

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

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

• “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
• The Fountain (1926) - 3.5 stars
• Marco Millions (1927) - 2.5 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
• 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

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

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

• Doctor Zhivago (1957) - 4 stars

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

• 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 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

Miguel Ángel Asturias (1974 Nobel) Guatemala 🇬🇹

• Men of Maize (1949) - 3.5 stars

Gabriel García Marquez (1982 Nobel) Colombia 🇨🇴

• One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) - 3.5 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

José Saramago (1998 Nobel) Portugal 🇵🇹

• The Cave (2000) - 3.5 stars

Günter Grass (1999 Nobel) Germany 🇩🇪

• The Tin Drum (1959) - 1.5 stars

Orhan Pamuk (2006 Nobel) Turkey 🇹🇷

• Snow (2002) - 3.5 stars

Mario Vargas Llosa (2010 Nobel) Peru

• The Feast of the Goat (2000) - 4.5 stars 🇵🇪

Mo Yan (2012 Nobel) China 🇨🇳

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

Bonus: Albert Einstein (1921 Nobel in Physics) Germany/Switzerland 🇩🇪 🇨🇭

• Essays in Humanism (1950) - 4 stars