Hello, Matthew. Here are some recommendations ^.^ 'Nada' (Nothing), by Carmen Laforet. She wrote it when she was just 23 years old and her writing is amazing. 'Niebla' (Fog) is also a very well known work by Unamuno. 'La colmena' (The hive) and 'La familia de Pascual Duarte' (The family of Pascual Duarte), both by Camilo José Cela. 'La Regenta', by Leopoldo Alas 'Clarin'. 'Luces de bohemia' (Bohemian lights), by Ramón María del Valle-Inclán.

My first book from Spanish writer is Carlos Ruiz Zafon "The shadows of the wind". I can't put the book down. Spanish lit hit different. I'm totally in love with Spanish lit now. Thank you for the others who gives another books recommendation for me to find out

Platero and I by Juan Ramón Jiménez s a very special book of prose-poems that my Spanish wife (from Murcia) loved as a child. English translations are available. I recommend you read it.

Excellent video. I came into Spanish (As well as international lit) by Roberto Bolaño. I started with Enrique Vila-Matas and Zafon, and then read other works that were translated from Spanish into English, such as works by Mario Vargas Llosa, Jorge Luis Borges, and Julio Cortázar. I agree that it's a shame that such critical works aren't translated into English more frequently. Maybe it has to do with the business of books. I hope it changes.

Hi!!Your channel just popped up in my feed and specifically with this video so I had to watch it. My name is Laura and I'm a Spanish book lover. I am happy to see that our litterature is of your interest and indeed, it is a very rich and prolific culture which could potentially last forever. I am a firm believer that the best thing one can do is to read in the native language, as the richness sometimes gets lost with a mediocre translation. However, good translations are also very necessary and I agree with you: there are not so many (and not just in english). I see you already got a ton of recommendations frrom other people so I won't insist too much. If you are interested, I offer my help to find good translations, but I am certain that you would enjoy way more once you speak more fluently the language. There are infinite great works that, I am sure, do not exist in english (as they are not considered major works) but they are excellent readings to deepen the knowledge of our History and its literature. Great channel by the way, you just got a new subscriber!!!

I'm back! I forgot to comment AFTER watching the video, but I think you got a great collection! I hope it has grown during this year since you published the video. You got some of Spain's greatest books, so there's not much I can say, but there's still a lot of more modern classics or literature that you could add, such as Miguel Delibes with The Dethrone Prince, Camilo Jose Cela with The Hive, etc. Spanish literature is very contemporary, being a “slice of life” of how life in Spain was back then, and I think that's where the beauty of our national works resides in. If your collectiong has grown I would love to see an update! You got a new follower :)

Hey brother, hope you are doing well. Thank you for your video.

Thank you for appreciating our literature, my friend. I would like to recommend "La regenta", by Leopoldo Alas, considered the second or third best Spanish novel of all time, after "Don Quixote" and together with "Fortunata and Jacinta".

I can strongly recommend Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, one of the biggest Spanish authors/poets of the 19th Century. A true romantic. Check out his classic poem collection Rimas (Rhymes), as well as his Leyendas (Legends). You will find the complete Rimas in modern English translation, with a few of the Legends thrown in ("Rhymes and Legends"). For more of the Legends specifically, there is a translation called "Romantic legends of Spain", which has lots more of them, rendered in what I thought was a very beautiful English version.

There is a book by Benito Pérez Galdós entitled: Fortunata y Jacinta you might like. I highly recommend the translation by Agnes Moncy Gullón who was also my Spanish Literature professor. Her translation is phenomenal. She had also written books and scholarly articles on Peninsular Literature!

I would like to recommend a couple writers you might like: Miguel de Unamuno a philosopher. novelist, playwright and poet who died in 1936. His best known work in English is The Tragic Sense of Life a powerful philosophical work. He wrote several novels but they are usually short. A good collection was Three Exemplary Novels. He also wrote plays and poetry. A couple oh his plays have been translate(not by me) and published. I have translated but never published several others. The next writer I would recommend is Jacinto Benavente who lived until 1956. He is mainly remembered as a playwright and for one especially called Bonds of Interest which was in the Commedia della Arte tradition and demonstrates how the social system causes people to protect criminals when punishing them might inconvenience important people. Are you interested in Latin American Spanish writers, if so I can make some suggestions there as well.

I am from Spain, there is a book about an anti hero in the cavalry genre written in Catalan language, called Tirant lo blanch. I don't even think there's a translation into English of that but I wish people knew more about it. There are hundreds of modern novels that the English speaking community is unaware of. In Europe we translate books from many countries, even Africa or Asia, but looks like in the USA isn't a thing and such works are much harder to find.

A book that should not be missing in your spanish book collection is Bernal Diaz's "The True History of The Conquest of New Spain"

I'll have to check out Exemplary Stories. I've never thought to read anything besides Quixote from Cervantes. I haven't read Federico Garcia Lorca, but apparently Tim Buckley's album Lorca is named after him One of my favorite Spanish authors is Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio. He has two books in translation, The Adventures of the Ingenious Alfanhui and The River. They are very different but both wonderful books translated by Jull Costa. The River is one of those books that occasionally pop into my mind well after reading it. I like to recommend him as much as I can since he's so obscure over here

One of my favorite is Javier Marias

I'm a year later here and before I watch the video I HOPE there’s some Zafón in here (aka the best spanish author ever)

"The spanish pionners" book

I studied Catalan literature at university, and I'd say if you love Spanish "Castillian" literature, take a look at Catalan literature (which is Spanish or Iberian, after all). Golden century poets such as Ausiàs March or Jaume Roig (author of a picaresque novel in verse called "Espill o llibre de les dones") created universal masterpieces, and of course the Tirant lo Blanc and the Curial e Güelfa are probably the best chivalry books ever written in a romance language. 20th century classics like Mercè Rodoreda, Josep Pla or Terenci Moix are also a must, and I recommend Gabriel Ferrater and Màrius Torres' poetry. Torres, to me, is as good as Shakespeare, Borges or Proust, you can't finish one of his poems without feeling a shiver down your spine. Well, hope it awakens your interest on the topic! :)

These are not famous writers in the English community but you need to read them. Jaime Bayly. José María Arguedas. César Vallejo, Julio Ramón Ribeyro and José Mauro de Vasconcelos. If you find these authors in English, man your gonna blow up. These are very important for us (Latin American)

In my opinion the richest and most influential literature, the Hispanic one

Matthew have you thought of having a look online for bookshops in L.A. I'm guessing with a significant Hispanic population, maybe Tom LA Books may have some bookshops to recommend? Most bookshops now have catalogues in pdf format to download.

I own a translation of La Regenta by Leopoldo Alas, which I believe counts as Spanish Lit. I also have a translation of Tirant Lo Blanc, but I think that is Catalan not Spanish. The latter is a chivalric romance mentioned in Don Quixote as the priest's favourite when they go through Quixote's books in order to burn them.

BACK AGAIN WITH SOME LATIN AMERICAN RECOMMENDATIONS Two very good books translated by Barnaby Conrad who was, BTW the first American ever to become a Mexican Bullfighter. The first is by Luis Spota that I read in a Signet paperback back in the 60s. The American Title is the Wounds of Hunger. It{s a story about 6 young men and a girl who leave their remote village to get into Bullfighting. They all want to be matadors. The story follows them for about a decade and they have lots of adventures, some rather tragic. It is hard to get hold of and Spota is not well known even here in Mexico, but a very enjoyable read. The second book is The 2nd Life of Captain Contreras by Torquato Luca de Tena. This chap is actually Spanish. The story is about a dashing young Spanish Captain on the run from the Inquisition. He is persuaded by a friend to hide in a barrel of honey or something like that. The Inquisition doesnt get him but the Honey does. Several hundred years later the cask is discovered and the body is taken to a hospital facility to be studied. There, to the amazement of the medical staff he wakes up as he is about to be autopsied. Contreras is a sort of Spanish D{Artagnan with strong feelings of honor which makes it very hard for him to adapt in the modern world where honor means so little. I thought it would make a good play, but so did he and his relative who got there first and made a stage adaptation in 1954. The 3rd book is by Enrique Lafoucarde and it is called King Ahab{s Feast. Lafourcarde is Chilean and fled to Mexico during the Allende difficulties. His niece became a very famous singer in Mexico. The story is about this little Caribbean Island Dictatorship probably modeled on the Dominican Republic and Trujillo. The Dictator presides over a friendly court that consists amongst others of a dictator in exile, probably Peron, his security chief who is a former SS Officer, the French ambassador and the dictator{s own beautiful but promiscuous daughter. Lafourcade was a journalist and screenwriter. I frankly have never seen a country taken apart from top to bottom as effortlessly as is done here. I may think of more. But these three are all very fine, if hard to get.

What about the Moorish period?

On why Spanish literature might be hard to find in translation, for a long time the Spanish literary tradition used to be one of the more respected ones in Europe, which is why it is so present in Elizabethan-era literature and why poems that today have fallen into obscurity outside the Hispanic world, like La Auracana, were still discussed by, for example, 18th century French writers and were held in the same level as some Classical writers. But Spanish political decadence coincided with a long period of literary “decadence”, during which there is no work on par with the Golden age writings or with the works being made in the rest of Europe. The combination of these two aspects diminished the prestige and influence of Hispanic culture and literature in the rest of the world. And even if Modernismo and writers like Galdós began a new renaissance of Hispanic literature, and even if the Boom writers gained prestige outside the language, Hispanic literature never quite regained the level of prestige it once had in the past.

Fortunata y Jacinta is better than anything Dickens ever did... It is right up there with Anna Karenina and Middlemarch. I confess I haven't read that much of Dickens so...take that as a qualifier.

Amadis of Gaul and The Araucaniad

Neither Spain nor Spanish language existed in Trajan or Seneca times.