[Ntschotschi]

Liselle just stated on another topic that there are only three people on this board who know Wolfgang Hohlbein.
So it came to my mind that indeed there are very few "non-english" fantasy writers around. Besides Wolfgang Hohlbein (and his wife) who are German, best-seller authors in fact, i don't know many. Only Michael Ende, who's famous for his "Neverending story".

There are some more s/f authors I know, Stanislaw Lem, the Strugatzky (sp?) brothers but that's it I think.
If I took the effort maybe I could produce some few more, but fact is: fantasy in my opinion is basicly an english-speaking/writing genre.
Or do you know/read other languages? Maybe there are some brilliant norwegian or russian or chinese or whatever authors and we just don't know about them?
Having so many members from different nations on this board there should be quite a few "homegrown" treasures...

[Lani]

Well, considering that I started to read fantasy still being in Russia, I know a lot of fantasy authors there. Of course Strugatski brothers, Stanislav Lem, Alexandr Belyaev, Ivan Efremov are the most known ones, because they wrote quite a time ago. There's much more modern fantasy authors - some of them are pretty good, some of them are not. It's pretty much the same as in english fantasy, though of course the books themselves differ alot. Some of the modern authors that I found enjoyable were:
Maria Semenova, Andrei Valentinov, Yurii Nikitin.
I'm sorry if i spelled some names wrong, but I tried my best to convert them on english language.

[Barbarossa]

A very good German Author (in my opinion anyway) is Carl Amery. He was never translated into another language to my knowledge. He writes mostly in the sf sub-genre of paralell history.
His two best books are "An den Feuern der Leyermark" which is really hilarious, but pretty thought provoking too.
And "Das Königsprojekt" which is about a special unit of the pope's swiss guard that tries to change history in the catholics favor using a time-machine built by Leonardo da'Vinci.

[Liselle]

Sticking to fantasy, nothing comes to my mind, but generally speaking, there are Ingrid Noll with her 'Die Häupter meiner Lieben' ('My dears' heads' or sth like it) and many else, and of course everybody knows Umberto Eco with his 'Il nome della rosa' ('The name of the rose')... sorry if I'm a bit off topic...

[FitzChivalry]

The name of the rose is one of my all time favorite movies...
How good is the book?

[Ntschotschi]

I think the book is far better than the film, although I like the film too. But there are much more nuances in the book. I learned a lot about this time from the book, Eco made all the new and quite extreme movements come alive. You should read it, especially when you liked the film.

[Thoughtcriminal84]

there is an incredible amount of Japanese fantasy out there, as well as sci-fi...I've read some of it, and translated version obviously losing some of it's literary punch aside, I've enjoyed almost all of it.

There is an entire genre of samurai fantasy fiction that I find engrossing. Ancient Japan is visited often by the forces of darkness in those works...and it doesn't get defeated as often as it does in Western works. It's interesting, and perhaps because it comes from a culture that is already as different from mine as I'm likely to find, I can't stop reading it.

Science fiction in Japan started when a tattered copy of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth came ashore in the early 1900's from an english trader's ship...they've taken it to some very intriguing places since then. Frankly, as in so many things, westerners could stand to learn a thing or three from them.

[FitzChivalry]

I find medieval europe styled fantasy more interesting than far east styled fantasy.
But, can you list some names of good japanese fantasy books and authors that been translated?

[Julianag]

A Russian author called Andrei Belyanin who writes good fantasy, he has a series about a young police officer sucked into the world of Russian Fairy tales. Very humourous but I think one need to have a bit of knowledge of Russian fairy tales. He does have more European-based fantasy as well but I do not know is his works have been translated.

[James Barclay]

There may be a lack of non-English fantasy in the English language but there are healthy markets in places like France, Germany, Russia for native authors in native languages. Although I understand the cost implications involved in translation, I do think it's unfortunate that English readers don't get enough opportunity to sample the disparate styles from across the world.

NOM