International Apocalyptic Fiction

Is still being worked on:  LOL.

I have a fair number of titles under the belt, but I cheated and went for some fast reads.  Karma has swung around and I have been bogged down in an interesting philosophical novel translated from Russian (Dmitry Bykov - Lost Souls), that also happens to be rather lengthy.  It's not bad, but don't these authors know I have reviews to write? LOL-again.  It would also be easier if they would stop using those strange accent marks in their names.

Not too surprisingly, a lot of these tales have a more dystopian, rather than straight forward apocalyptic tone.  There are apocalyptic foreign language novels, but they seem to rarely be translated.

International is intended to mean non-British, and non-American, because those two countries authors dominate the apocalypse-in-progress/dystopian genres in the English language.  Most of the other English language countries do well on a per capita basis, but are buried under the numbers.  Foreign language translations are tough.  Many worthy novels in the genre are never translated, this is not too surprising as a literary translation can take almost as long to write as a novel. 

A few of the novels are British and American in origin.  Mostly they were already read, or at least begun, when I started.  In a couple cases they were short and free, so I read them anyway.  Short and Free are universal, and thus international.

Here is what I have read, or in-part read:

2012 - Alisa Krasnostein and Ben Payne (editors) Australian short story collection

The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (1905) - Elliot E. Mills - British, but the past is a different country and all that.  Short and free.

Ashes, Ashes (Ravage) - René Barjavel - Vichy French

Quarter-Life Crises - Evan Murphy - Canadian - Graphic novel set in Toronto

Coming From an Off-Key Time - Bogdan Suceavã - Romanian

Enfold Me - Steven Greenberg - Israel

Vlad - Carlos Fuentes

The Literary Conference - César Aira - Argentinian, but mostly set in Venezuela

The Massive - Brian Wood - Graphic novel serial - American author with international setting

The Loom of Ruin - Sam McPheeter - American author set in the immegrant melting pot of Los Angelos

Fall Out - Gudrun Pausewang - West Germany

Friends and Other Stories of the Apocalypse- A.P. Menzie - American novel - but it was short and free.

La Jetée Ciné Roman - Chris Marker - French - Based on movie of the same name. Was the inspiration for the movie 12 Monkeys.

Memoria - Alex Bobl - Russian - Classic noir fiction in a dystopian future setting

Dog Eat Dog - David Rodgers - British with International setting. Has a RPG game (Yellow Dawn) associated with it.

Using a stricter definition, if we had not already reviewed them, we could include:

King of the Store Room - Antonio Porta - Italian

China Tidal Wave - Wang Lixiong -Chinese

Tobaccoo Stained Mountain Goat - Andrez Bergen - Australian

Malevil - Robert Merle - French

Yellow Cake Spring - Guy Salvidge - Australian

Kingdom of Four Rivers - Guy Salvidge - Australian

Red Queen - Honey Brown - Australian

Not sure how far I wil go. I told a crazy Canadian I would read Oryx and Crake, and I have one or two African novels, that I would need to fill out the continents, and at least one Japanese novel to fill out the Far East.  At this point I have more unread, than read.  So I will probably cut it short soon, and simply to get them posted before the world actually collapses taking the Internet, and my venue, with it.