When's the last time you read books like these?

[Zetatrain]

1.)The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas...does that count. Read it during my Sophomore year of high school (ten years ago) for fun. I actually had no idea Alexander Dumas was black(or partially black)at the time, but then again I usually don't look up information about the authors ahead of time and from what I remember the book had no pictures of him.

2.)Vol.1-5 of Full Metal Panic(Japanese light novel series)...does that count(didn't see japan on your list)? Other than that there's "The Battle that Doomed Japan" a book about the battle of Midway from a Japanese perspective. But it's not a novel so I think that disqualifies it.

One foreign novel I would gladly read if available in English is Shin Sekai Yori or Welcome to the New World.

Is there any particular reason you are asking these questions?

 

[Eamar]

1) To join the refrain: not a clue. Honestly, unless an author's really famous and therefore has their picture splashed around all over the internet and such (George R.R. Martin, Terry Pratchett etc) I'm usually hard pushed to even remember their names, let alone do a google image search or whatever. I'm highly unlikely to know anything about the author, especially with modern books, and I'm not normally interested in finding out more (Tolkien being the one exception). Hell, if they're using initials I'm not going to have any idea of their gender either, and I'm a feminist who should arguably be paying attention to stuff like that.

I'm the sort of person who couldn't tell you the names of the members of any of my favourite bands. I focus on the end product, not the people behind it.

I guess it's probably been a while though - I tend to read either SF/fantasy, which for whatever reason is pretty white-dominated, or 19th/early 20th-century stuff, which is white-heavy for obvious reasons.

EDIT: And honestly, I can't remember the last book I read that had a photo of the author.

2) I've read a few, mostly classics, but not particularly recently. Dante's Divine Comedy is next on my reading list though.

 

[El Luck]

1) Not a clue

2) The Witcher Series by Andrzej Sapkowski

I don't really read that much, meh.

 

[doggy go 7]

1) I usually haven't got a clue the race of the author I'm reading, so I'll go with the last one I do happen to know that was written by a black person; Noughts and Crosses (and indeed, the ensuing series) by Malorie Blackman

2) Anna Karenina, Tolstoy. Fuck y'all, I can do pretentious if I want to

 

[The White Hunter]

I wouldn't have a clue in the slightest. The last time I can think of where I might have read something fitting into one of those categories was back in either middle or high school.

Likewise, I haven't read a novel since high school, which was a good 6 years ago. I didn't even read one for my teaching reading paper at uni I just pulled it out my ass.

I read mostly manga if anything these days xd novels are a chore, there's a few about I'd like to get in audiobook form though, for example Metro.

 

[LongAndShort]

No idea about the black author. I don't know what most authors I read look like.

As for foreign authors, I recently finished the recently translated (as far as I know) from Polish 'Baptism of Fire' by Andrzej Sapkowski.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

1)I don't really know. If there isn't a picture of the author on the back, I usually have no clue what they look like. Haven't read any books from authors that *I know* are black in a while though. Usually I don't read autobiographies or books that are trying to be literary for the sake of being literary. The last time I knew the author was black was with a book specifically about the situation in Africa.

2)All the time. In fact, I'm reading one right know (thriller by Jo Nesbø, Norwegian author). Of course, I'm part of a limited language group, so it's more likely for us to read translated books. Have to say I'm also not a big fan of most Dutch authors at the moment, the "literary elite" seems to be a bit too uptight for me and focuses more on language before content.

 

[Flatfrog]

I think a lot of people are being pretty disingenuous in answering that first question. Lots of people saying they 'don't care' or 'don't pay attention' to the colour of the authors they read, and sure, I'm sure that's perfectly true - I don't care about the race of the authors of the books I read either, but it doesn't mean I can't glance over my shelves and be pretty sure about 80% of them because they're relatively well known.

And the answer is - of all the fiction authors I've got nearby that I *know* their colour, none at all are black. Which is a genuinely interesting thing to notice. I can't offhand think of a single author I've ever read who was non-white apart from Malorie Blackman (as a child). I've got a couple of Ali Smith novels that I haven't got round to reading yet, and there's plenty of authors whose race I don't know, but mostly it's a sea of caucasians.

Plenty of works in translation, though. Not sure what the most recent was - probably The Book Thief, although I didn't particularly enjoy it and I didn't get to the end.

 

[Jandau]

1. Why would I purposely seek out a novel by a black author? If someone writes something I want to read, I'll read it, regardless of his or her skin color.

2. Last year. Sapkowski's Blood of Elves. Got the sequel on my shelf, waiting its turn later this year.

 

[Queen Michael]

I think a lot of people are being pretty disingenuous in answering that first question. Lots of people saying they 'don't care' or 'don't pay attention' to the colour of the authors they read, and sure, I'm sure that's perfectly true - I don't care about the race of the authors of the books I read either, but it doesn't mean I can't glance over my shelves and be pretty sure about 80% of them because they're relatively well known.

And the answer is - of all the fiction authors I've got nearby that I *know* their colour, none at all are black. Which is a genuinely interesting thing to notice. I can't offhand think of a single author I've ever read who was non-white apart from Malorie Blackman (as a child). I've got a couple of Ali Smith novels that I haven't got round to reading yet, and there's plenty of authors whose race I don't know, but mostly it's a sea of caucasians.

Plenty of works in translation, though. Not sure what the most recent was - probably The Book Thief, although I didn't particularly enjoy it and I didn't get to the end.

Actually, The Book Thief was written in English.

Concerning your first paragraph: thank you.

 

[Queen Michael]

As mentioned, the race of the author doesn't matter, so I only ever read books by white English speaking authors.

This made my day. Thanks for the laugh.

To those saying that the author's demographics don't matter, you're kinda missing the point. He's not saying you should judge a novel by those characteristics; he's just trying to identify whether people read books outside of their own demographics. Because if 100 people were to say 'demographics don't matter to me', they may well be right personally, but if none of them have ever read a books by an author outside their own demographic, there's clearly a factor at play: things like this influence our choices subconsciously.

It could also be that black people aren't published as often. All I know is that it indicates something when few of the people here feel certain they've ever read a black person's novel.

 

[Queen Michael]

1. Why would I purposely seek out a novel by a black author? If someone writes something I want to read, I'll read it, regardless of his or her skin color.

Um... I didn't ask if you purposely seek out novels by black authors. I asked for the name of the last novel by a black person that you read.

 

[Cowabungaa]

One I honestly don't know, could be that I did but as I rarely look up something about the author I just don't know.

The second I do know, I've got a few of those on my shelves. The last one I think was The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared (dat title) a year or so ago. It's Swedish originally, read the English version. Hilarious little novel, very good, comes recommended. I've also got one or two Russian classics on my shelves that I still need to read.

1) Either never or I didn't know the author was black.

2) I've read books and novels from US, British, Dutch, German, French, Latin, Russian, Greek, Italian, Belgian and probably some more countries. Usually I read the English translations, except when the original is in Dutch obviously.

I feel so stupid when I say that, even with Dutch or Belgian writers I'd probably still get the English version. I don't know, I never really liked to, well, see our language.

 

[ThreeName]

>>Implying I look up the race of authors I read

That's weird man. What about the other races? I find it odd to choose black specifically.

As for the other question, I guess some of the Baccano! novels.

 

[Korolev]

The Last time I read a novel by a black author was about 2008 - I got a book called "The Wizard of the Crow". It's great, absolutely fantastic.

The last time I read a book that was translated was.. well, three days ago and I'm still reading it - "A Writer At War" by Vasily Grossman. It's a collection of diary entries by the famous Russian Reporter/Novelist/Propagandist Vasily Grossman. It's absolutely fascinating to read. Like most propagandists, he knew that a lot of his work was a bunch of lies and half-truths, but he felt that he had to inspire a nation during a time of war. Unfortunately, he went too far and some of his works directly contributed to some of the atrocities (and they were atrocities, not to the same scale as committed by the Nazis but bad nonetheless) against German Civilians at the end of WW2 (I am not saying the USSR was as bad as Nazi Germany. Due to the fact that the Russians started feeding the Germans after WW2, they were clearly the better side. The Germans had no plans to feed the majority of Russians if they had won - their plans specifically included starving millions of Russians to death).

Grossman and the Soviet Authorities actually knew they had gone to far - as they were nearing Berlin, the Russian authorities DESPERATELY tried to rush out new propaganda pleading for Red Army troops to take vengeance against the Nazis and not the German People, because the Russian authorities actually wanted a lot of Germans to work for the Soviets and become communist. It was too late, though. The Horrendous Nature of the war, the previous propaganda and the sheer misery and pain caused by the Germany Army meant that the Russians were going to do some pretty horrible things when they got to Berlin. Again, I'm not saying the USSR and the Nazi party were equivalent - the Nazis were clearly worse, but the Red Army did some pretty appalling things during the first few weeks when they got into Germany. For what it's worth, Grossman regretted his role in making some of the more inflammatory propaganda.

Anyway, it's an interesting read.

 

[Richard Dubbeld]

Anything by the late Chinua Achebe, but specifically his novel Things Fall Apart.

Both 1 and 2 covered.

 

[Thaluikhain]

It could also be that black people aren't published as often. All I know is that it indicates something when few of the people here feel certain they've ever read a black person's novel.

There is something of a ghetto that black fiction (that is, written by or about black people) falls into.

I've read lots of complaints about US bookstores in which black fiction is somehow a separate genre, segregated into its own section. Doesn't matter what the book is about, if it's by a black person or the main character is, it goes in the "Stuff that only black people read, which is all they read" section. For some reason.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

1: I don't think i ever did. If I did then I don't remember it right now.

2: That however is an easy one. A bit less than a year ago i read 1Q84 by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami.

 

[timeformime]

I'm a big fan of Russian literature, and Alexander Pushkin was actually 1/8 black, so I guess the collection of his stories and novellas that I read last year might count for both of your criteria (I recommend it to literally anybody). Half joking here, but 1/8 is still 1/8
I say might, because Russia's not exactly prolific these days, but it's not obscure either... though Gabriel Garcia Marquez is from Colombia. I read Love in the Time of Cholera 3 years ago, and I read several of his short stories last year, and I've made a few unsuccessful false starts trying to read One Hundred Years of Solitude.

As for contemporary black writers not named Ralph Ellison, I have to go back a few years to The Pursuit of Happyness, which I read back in high school. Before that, Gifted Hands, written by a black surgeon, again in high school. It's easy to say that "race doesn't matter," but as it's been mentioned, that's a bit disingenuous - the fact is that there really are very few black writers of fiction these days. It's a whole other conversation to think about why that is.

BTW, Korolev, Vasily Grossman sounds really interesting. I've been meaning to get more into Soviet authors someday.

Oops, just googled it, looks like Pushkin was only about 1/8th black. Looks like that kind of derails my point.