I just had a conversation with my cousin in Brussels where I offhandedly mentioned reading The Joy Luck Club multiple times during school, and to my surprise she’d never heard of it. It’s so ubiquitous here, but in retrospect it makes sense because it specifically talks about the Asian-American experience. That got me wondering: what are some books from your country that are commonly assigned or that everyone reads at some point?
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Greek Cypriots do not typically read literature, and even assigned reading in schools is commonly avoided thanks to “study notes” provided by cram schools.
If there’s a book that maybe most people will recognise and there’s a good chance they had to read, it’s [Ο μεγάλος περίπατος του Πέτρου](https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9F_%CE%BC%CE%B5%CE%B3%CE%AC%CE%BB%CE%BF%CF%82_%CF%80%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%AF%CF%80%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%82_%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%85_%CE%A0%CE%AD%CF%84%CF%81%CE%BF%CF%85) (English: [Petros’ War](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/145368.Petros_War)). It’s a good book and at least when I was in school, the lesson plan did it justice (it wasn’t used purely as a vehicle for linguistic analysis, like the Homeric Epics are used).
Hard to tell. *Het diner* by Herman Koch and *Komt een vrouw bij de dokter* by Kluun were extremely popular around 15 years ago.
In highschool, students often choose the shortest books to read, so I guess almost everyone has read *Het gouden ei* by Tim Krabbé and *Het bittere kruid* by Marga Minco.
I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) by Alessandro Manzoni
It’s typically assigned to every Italian student during the second year of high school, and most students absolutely hate it. For very good reasons, I think.
Manzoni’s writing is the most perfect Italian writing ever created. His grammar is pristine, his sentences flow beautifully. It’s just the best example of Italian writing that can be found in literature. So it makes a lot of sense that Italian students read and analyze it.
However, as much as Manzoni’s technical skill in writing is incredible, his ability in ideating a good plot is lackluster. Most of the characters of The Betrothed are weak and boring. Entire chapters are dedicated to excruciatingly long sub-plots about minor characters nobody cares about (looking at you, Nun of Monza).
Some professors understand this and focus on the grammar aspects. Others are madly in love with every aspect of the book and make students learn every single detail of the crappy lives of the minor characters.
I cannot speak for everybody but from my experience and talking to other people following books are staples that most read in schools:
Faust – Goethe
Jugend ohne Gott (youth without God) – Ödön von Horvath
Der Schüler Gerber (the pupil Gerber) – Friedrich Torberg
The only books I remember having to read was Les Miserables. For every other book assignment we were allowed to choose. Or we read fragments of famous books like Crime and Punishment. But we never read the full thing
In Croatia there are a lot of books that are mandatory to read in primary and high school (one per month during school). But often times, kids dont read it, but only read the summary.
Its hard to pick a few, but here are some Croatian books that are super popular among these:
* **Čudnovate zgode šegrta Hlapića** – Ivana Brlić Mažuranić
This is a very popular book for kids and is mandatory (at least used to be) in primary school. There is also a cartoon based on the book.
* **Zlatarevo Zlato** – August Šenoa
This one is mostly hated as its written in a hard to understand way and the topic is incredibly boring for a teenager.
* **Ribanje i ribarsko prigovaranje** – Petar Hektorović
Famous for being first in its genre in Croatian. But also not very loved.
There are many more books that everybody knows about, too many to list everything here. Also there are a lot of foreign books that are mandatory such as Little prince, Crime and Punishment, Odyssey or Iliad.
If everybody would read every book that is mandatory here, we would have a very well educated people. Sadly, its much more popular to just read a summary and get away with a lower grade.
Every Norwegian household has a copy of ‘Norske folkeeventyr’ (Norwegian folktales) by Asbjørnsen and Moe. The authors travelled round Norway collecting folktales that had previously been passed on by oral tradition. I’m an immigrant and even I have a copy.
There are five books that are iconic, and that most portuguese have read (in full or in parts), or at least read about:
The Trilogy of the Ships:
A trilogy of plays by Gil Vicente, written between 1517 and 1519. Most portuguese have read and watched at least one of the plays, and that play is most likely the first one: Act of the Ship of Hell. It’s a satirical comedy that heavily criticizes the morality of the portuguese elite and society.
The Lusiads:
By far the most important work in portuguese literature. Written by Luís Vaz de Camões, and published in 1572, it’s considered one of the most important epic poems in history. It is a glorification of what Portugal and the portuguese society can do best, like innovation, technology and exploration the world, but also criticizes those who try to use those achievements for greed, self gain, abuse of power and inertia.
The Maias:
A novel published in 1888 by Eça de Queiroz. The book concerns the life of young aristocrat Carlos da Maia, and uses it as metaphor and criticism for the decay of portuguese society, religion and the monarchy.
Fernando Pessoa’s poetry:
Fernando Pessoa lived in the late 19th and early 20th century. He was famous for having multiple hereronyms, each one with their own ideas, likes, dislikes, criticisms and opinions.
Baltasar and Blinunda:
Published by José Saramago in 1982, Baltasar and Blimunda (in portuguese: Memorial do Convento) is an 18th century love story intertwined with the construction of the Mafra Convent. The book criticizes colonialism, the exploitation of the poor by the rich, corruption, religion and has strong themes of fighting against oppression and authority. It won a nobel prize for literature.
I feel like there is a substantial portion of people in Ireland who just don’t read, but for those who do
In English I’d say “to kill a mockingbird”. In Irish I’d say probably “dúnmharú ar an dart” because they were junior cycle stuff at the time
My primary school was apparently well known for giving us more advanced work so we had all done “roll of thunder hear my cry” and “aililiu bop siuaidi” before we were 13
I can’t recall having any big assignments forcing a book on us. There were of course some, but it is largely up to the individual teacher, so we don’t have that much of a book that everyone is forced to read on a national level. We mostly had “free reading”, where we would pick books on appropriate levels and do a little report on them – the idea being that our motivation to read would be higher if we read what we wanted ourselves. That said, I can’t think of a single person that doesn’t know HC Andersen’s tales and the Valhalla comics
As we do not really have an obligatory set of books to read in school, this largely varies from person to person.
But some ubiquitous book series are:
* [The Bert Diaries](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_Diaries)
* Books by Astrid Lindgren, e.g.
* [Emil of Lönneberga](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_i_L%C3%B6nneberga)
* [Pippi Longstocking](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pippi_Longstocking)
* [Karlson-on-the-Roof](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlsson-on-the-Roof)
* [Pettson and Findus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pettson_and_Findus)
These are all popular children books. After this stage, the readership becomes too diverse to include everyone.
Hard to say… many (most likely the mayority) people in Norway don’t read books at all.. people rather listen to podcast or watch series on netflix.. In school you have som curriculum..But it’s more up to the teacher.. In some classes/schools you read one book of Ibsen, while you at another school read another of ibsen.. Meaning that even among the most famous writers “everyone” hasn’t read the same book.. If you took such classics as all quiet on the western front.. probably 2-3% of those having seen the movie, having also read the book….Gives a picture of how little people actually reads.. Some study recently in norway showed that 1/3 of those between 16 and 30 having never read a book in their life.. With such numbers it’s hard to speak of books everybody has read..
I’m curious, do students in your countries actually read what’s assigned to them? I’m from Croatia and during both elementary and high school maybe 2-3 people in my class out of 25 actually read them, everyone else would just read a summary online
Hard to isolate books “everyone read” in france as the list of mandatory readings change almost every year so each generation would have read different books, but here are some all-time classics, any french that made it through the lycée probably read at least one of these (not exhaustive of course):
– Les Fables de La Fontaine
– Le malade imaginaire – Molière
– Candide – Voltaire
– Le rouge et le noir – Stendhal
– Madame Bovary – Flaubert
– Les fleurs du mal – Baudelaire
– Germinal – Zola
– Cyrano de Bergerac – Rostand
– L’étranger – Camus
– Le petit prince – Saint-Exupéry
– Vendredi ou la vie sauvage – Tournier
There are some classical books that are mandatory for higher education but always in rotation – so for example a book every 3 years and after 12 it comes back. These would be something like:
Faust – Goethe
Efie Briest – Theodor Fontane
Metamorphosis – Kafka,
The Sorrows of Young Werther – again Goethe
Nathan the wise – Lessing.
So you don’t have to read all of them, but maybe one or two mandatory. With them comes then additional more modern literature or other historical but not so famous ones like
Homo Farber from Max Frisch or Woyzeck from Georg Büchner.
These are also changed every few years but don’t usually come back again after a decade or so. So pupils in your own age gap mostly will have read the same book, but for the population overall it mostly sets down to the few classical ones.
These are off course just the school applied literature. Nationwide there are some bestsellers many people have read over the last few year’s which would be something like
Christiane F. From well Christiane Vera Felscherinow,
Wetlands from Charlotte Roche
Or Perfume from Patric Süskind.
International classics and bestsellers are also of course read but I guessed this question targeted more national uniques.