Wordsmith in a foreign tongue

mikebailey at speakeasy.net mikebailey at speakeasy.net
Fri Sep 29 09:36:54 CDT 2006


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ya Sam [mailto:takoitov at hotmail.com]
> Subject: Wordsmith in a foreign tongue
> 
> The success of Jonathan Littell's 900 page holocaust novel written in French 


news to me -- interesting.  Looks like he paid a lot of dues to get travel and life experience.

> made me once again aware of that strange yet persistent phenomenon: authors 
> choosing to write in a second or even a third language. So how many such 
> authors (of note) are at loose?
... Joseph Conrad (Polish, wrote in English)
> Vladimir Nabokov (Russian, wrote in English)
> Samuel Beckett (Irish, wrote in French)
> Andrei Makine (Russian, writes in French)
> Jerzy Kosinski (the most controversial one, Polish, wrote in English)
> Tamas Aczel (Hungarian, wrote in English) (never read him, so don't know 
> quality-wise)
> I don't know whether Salman Rushdie counts, as nowhere did I read that Urdu 
> was his first language.
> 
> Anyone else you know?
> There is an opinion that writing in a second language promotes creativity.
> 

Peter Kropotkin did a lot of writing in English, didn't he?






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