How hard do you think it would be to write a world-class novel

English is pretty much the world language so if you want the widest base you go in English.

>>7680109
Considering it's already insanely hard to write a world-class novel in your native language, I assume writing one in a second language would be even harder.

>>7680109
Stay away from Jhumpa Lahiri. She is the reason for your "maladies".

Read Nabokov and Beckett.

>>7680109
Plenty of Esperantists did it.

>>7680908
All I know about her is that Tao Lin mentioned her in one of his shitty books.

>>7680901
>>7680896
What if the second language doesn't have a strong literary tradition, or at least there might be an unsuspected market for "English" literature in another language. Learning another language well enough to write your above-average novel in it might be easier than writing a great novel in English. At least for some people.

I don't know whether writing a really good Pashto (e.g.) novel counts as "world-class" though.

>>7680109
>>7680950
I hope you don't think that Lahiri's novels are written in "another language". They're also not very good.

>>7680973
I'm the second guy you responded to, and not OP. I actually don't know anything about her or her books so I have no opinion on them either way.

CONRAD
O
N
R
A
Did it

About ten times as hard as writing a world-class novel in your own language... So gl hf.

>>7680908
Most reviews of her new book say that the writing is babby-tier

Why is /lit/ too pleb for Lahiri? Subtle and good short fiction writer. Probably one of the best living writers in America.

Not hard, just write your regular novel and put it through Google™ Translate™ :)

>>7681734
Don't fucking praise these things near me.

>>7680109
She is Indian. Indians have a strong tradition in English, for good or bad, thanks to two hundred years of colonial rule. India has produced a good number of well known "literary-type" English writers. Although there are extremely strong and extensive traditions in the local languages (particularly Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Assamese, Odisi, Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu, Kannadiga and Sanskrit).

Although Jhumpa grew up in US, there are plenty who produced most of their literature in India - Rushdie, Amitav Ghose, Vikram Seth, etc. Little known ones would be RK Narayan (praised by Graham Greene), and other translated authors.

Besides, there's a lot of great 2nd language literature out there. Nabokov, Conrad and Naipaul are the classics. Practically define this genre if it can be called so. The first lines of Orhan Pamuk's memoir starts with them. I think Brodsky wrote in English too(?). Not Sure.

Then there's Beckett - Irish, wrote most famous works in French. Kerouac - raised in French, wrote in English. Cioran wrote in French - a third language. Lit would hate her but Ayn Rand was raised in Russian. Yann Martel - raised French, wrote about the adventures of an Indian boy in a former French colony, but in English. Milan Kundera. Franz Fanon, although if you believe Saul Bellow there was nothing of value that could be produced in his native language. Thomas Piketty - french, not sure if Capital is translated but I think it was originally in English, not translated. Karl Marx now that I think about it, used to write in English for the New York Tribune - even Engels, who was English co-wrote with Marx in German I think.

>>7682179

“Conrad,Nabokov, Naipaul - these are writers known for having managed to migrate between languages, cultures, countries, continents, even civilizations. Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness. My imagination however, requires that I stay in the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul's fate is my fate. I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am.”

This is the quote from Pamuk I was referring to.

>>7682179
>>7682181
Nabokov grew up trilingual (Russian, French, English) anyway.

>>7682244
So did Naipaul. Lots of old-school continentals and Indians too. Lots of non-English countries have people knowing atleast two languages,more depending on the diversity. So its natural that famous expat-writers would know quite a few languages. Coetzee, Gordimer, Kipling, Orwell are all trilingual. All Indian English writers would be trilingual, because that is how the education system works there (Rushdie, Ghose, Narayan).

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65KB, 1280x720px

>>7682179
You are missing zizek :^)

>>7682179
Indian English writers do not count as Indian writers, they're all Brit shit that deserve to get immolated.

>>7681588
>>7681734


"Interpreter of Maladies" is one of the blandest stories I've read. She's just trying to be an early non-experimental modernist but in the present day, I don't see anything unique. Book-clubcore.