Friends of the Aiken Public Library Foreign Language Program

Our native language is English but the library should have some materials in other languages as well.

The library does not currently have the budget to obtain very many foreign language resources. Over the years, the library has collected a few Spanish language titles, but has nothing in other languages except for a few audiotape learning titles.

There are, however, a great many resources on the internet that can provide material in languages other than English. The Friends of the Aiken Public Library have a program to make foreign language materials available to library patrons. If you are looking to read something in a foreign language, please visit some of the following links. Each link shown below will take you to the book in its original language.

Spanish

Written in 1606 by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Don Quixote is the story of a gentleman who has read so much of knights and knighthood that he believes himself to be one. Together with his companion Sancho Panza, the self-styled Don Quixote de la Mancha sets out in search of adventures. His "lady" is Dulcinea del Toboso, an imaginary object of his courtly love. As a founding work of modern Western literature, it regularly appears at or near the top of lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published. Since it is in the Spanish of 400 yeas ago, it can be a bit difficult for a neophyte, but the challenge is similar to reading Shakespeare, and the results just as satisfying. If you are not up to the challenge but would still like to read this masterpiece in English, see the entry in our Great Books List.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a novel by Nobel Prize winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that was first published in Spanish in 1967. The book is considered García Márquez's masterpiece, metaphorically encompassing the history of Colombia or Latin America. The novel chronicles a family's struggle, and the history of their fictional town, Macondo, for one hundred years. Like many other novels by Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude crosses genres, combining elements of history, magical realism, and pure fiction.

French

Written in 1844 by Alexandre Dumas (père), The Count of Monte Cristo is the story of Edmond Dantès, who is falsely accused of espionage by a group of jealous enemies and who is imprisoned as a spy in an impregnable island fortress, the Château d'If. After many years of bitter solitude, he escapes with the secret of a large fortune entrusted to him by a fellow inmate. He uses that fortune to establish himself as the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo, and then proceeds to exact vengeance on his enemies. The French is modern, but somewhat dated, similar to reading Dickens or Jane Austen in English, but if you would prefer to read this masterpiece in English, see the entry in our Great Books List.

The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, père. It recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to become a musketeer. D'Artagnan is not one of the musketeers of the title; those are his friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis -- inseparable friends who live by the motto, "One for all, and all for one". The story of d'Artagnan is continued in Twenty Years After and The Vicomte de Bragelonne. Those three novels by Dumas are together known as the d'Artagnan Romances. Dumas' version of the story covers the adventures of d'Artagnan and his friends from 1625 to 1628, as they are involved in intrigues involving the weak King Louis XIII of France, his powerful and cunning advisor Cardinal Richelieu, the beautiful Queen Anne of Austria, her English lover, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and the Siege of La Rochelle. Adding to the intrigue are the mysterious Milady de Winter, and Richelieu's right-hand man, the Comte de Rochefort.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, (Notre Dame de Paris) was published by Victor Hugo in 1831 and is one of his many historical novels, set in fifteenth century Paris. The archdeacon of Notre Dame, a certain Claude Frollo, falls in lust with Esmerelda - a gypsy dancer - who is much admired by the crowds of the city. At his instruction, Quasimodo, the grotesque hunchbacked bell-ringer of Notre Dame who he has befriended, kidnaps her. Her rescue is brought about by Phoebus de Chateaupers (Captain of the Royal Archers) and she falls mistakenly in love with his bravery when he is in reality something of a rogue and a braggart. Frollo follows Esmerelda to a meeting with Phoebus who he stabs before her leaving her to be sentenced to death for the murder. Quasimodo has become her effective slave due to a single act of kindness and takes her to sanctuary in the cathedral. Adventures follow including a band of gypsies attempt to save Esmerelda from the cathedral, the disguised Frollo’s persuasion of the girl to leave with him and the brief return of Esmerelda to her mother. The sad finale involves the Archers’ fierce arrest of Esmerelda, her hanging and Quasimodo’s wretched misery at the loss of the girl. There is some retribution for Frollo however, and the story, though not always following history very closely, presents a vivid picture of medieval Paris.

One of the most widely read novels of all time, Les Misérables was the crowning literary achievement of Victor Hugo’s stunning career. Though he was considered the greatest French writer of his day, Hugo was forced to flee the country because of his opposition to Napoleon III. While in exile he completed Les Misérables, an enormous melodrama set against the background of political upheaval in France following the rule of Napoleon I.
Les Misérables tells the story of the peasant Jean Valjean—unjustly imprisoned, baffled by destiny, and hounded by his nemesis, the magnificently realized, ambiguously malevolent police detective Javert. As Valjean struggles to redeem his past, we are thrust into the teeming underworld of Paris with all its poverty, ignorance, and suffering. Just as cruel tyranny threatens to extinguish the last vestiges of hope, rebellion sweeps over the land like wildfire, igniting a vast struggle for the democratic ideal in France.
A monumental classic dedicated to the oppressed, the underdog, the laborer, the rebel, the orphan, and the misunderstood, Les Misérables is a rich, emotional novel that captures nothing less than the entirety of life in nineteenth-century France.

Russian

Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse written by Aleksandr Pushkin. It was one of the classics of Russian literature and its hero served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes. It was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832.
Eugene Onegin, a Russian dandy who is bored with life, inherits a country mansion from his uncle. When he moves to the country he strikes up an unlikely friendship with the minor poet Vladimir Lensky. One day Lensky takes Onegin to dine with the family of his fiancée Olga Larina. At this meeting Olga's bookish and countrified sister, Tatiana (Tanya), falls in love with Onegin. During the night Tatiana writes a letter to Onegin professing her love and sends it to him. While this is something a heroine in one of Tatiana's French novels would have done, Russian society would consider it inappropriate for a young, unmarried girl to take the initiative. Contrary to her expectations, Onegin does not reply by letter. The two meet on his next visit where he rejects her advances in a speech that has been described as tactful yet condescending.
Later Lensky nonchalantly invites Onegin to Tatiana's nameday celebration promising a small celebration with just Tatiana her sister and parents. At the celebration Onegin finds a grandiose ball reminiscent of the fast-paced world he has grown homesick for. To exact revenge on Lensky (and amuse himself) Onegin proceeds to flirt and dance with Olga. Lensky leaves in a rage and in the morning issues a challenge of a duel to Onegin. At the duel Onegin kills Lensky, then flees.
Tatiana visits Onegin's mansion where she reads through his books and the notes in the margins, and through this comes to believe that Onegin's character is merely a collage of different literary heroes and so there is no "real Onegin". Later Tanya is taken to Moscow and introduced to society. In this new environment Tanya matures to such an extent that when Onegin returns to Moscow he fails to recognise her. When he realises who she is, he tries to win her affection despite the fact that she is now married, only to be ignored. He writes her a letter and receives no reply. The book ends when Onegin manages to see Tanya and is once more rejected in a speech echoing the speech he previously gave her.

War and Peace, epic historical novel by Leo Tolstoy, originally published in 1865-69. This panoramic study of early 19th-century Russian society, noted for its mastery of realistic detail and variety of psychological analysis, is generally regarded as one of the world's greatest novels. War and Peace is primarily concerned with the histories of five aristocratic families--particularly the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, and the Rostovs--the members of which are portrayed against a vivid background of Russian social life during the war against Napoleon (1805-14). The theme of war, however, is subordinate to the story of family existence, which involves Tolstoy's optimistic belief in the life-asserting pattern of human existence. The heroine, Natasha Rostova, for example, reaches her greatest fulfillment through her marriage to Pierre Bezukhov and her motherhood. The novel also sets forth a theory of history, concluding that there is a minimum of free choice; all is ruled by an inexorable historical determinism.

Vladimir Nabokov called Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina “one of the greatest love stories in world literature.” Matthew Arnold claimed it was not so much a work of art as “a piece of life.” Set in imperial Russia, Anna Karenina is a rich and complex meditation on passionate love and disastrous infidelity.
Married to a powerful government minister, Anna Karenina is a beautiful woman who falls deeply in love with a wealthy army officer, the elegant Count Vronsky. Desperate to find truth and meaning in her life, she rashly defies the conventions of Russian society and leaves her husband and son to live with her lover. Condemned and ostracized by her peers and prone to fits of jealousy that alienate Vronsky, Anna finds herself unable to escape an increasingly hopeless situation.
Set against this tragic affair is the story of Konstantin Levin, a melancholy landowner whom Tolstoy based largely on himself. While Anna looks for happiness through love, Levin embarks on his own search for spiritual fulfillment through marriage, family, and hard work. Surrounding these two central plot threads are dozens of characters whom Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together, creating a breathtaking tapestry of nineteenth-century Russian society.
From its famous opening sentence—“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”—to its stunningly tragic conclusion, this enduring tale of marriage and adultery plumbs the very depths of the human soul.

Italian

The Divine Comedy, written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the central epic poem of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. A culmination of the medieval world-view of the afterlife, it helped establish the Tuscan dialect in which it is written as the Italian standard.
The Divine Comedy is composed of three canticas — Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise) — composed each of 33 cantos. An initial canto serves as an introduction to the poem and is generally not considered to be part of the first cantica, bringing the total number of cantos to 100.
The poet tells in the first person his travel through the three realms of the dead, lasting during the Easter Triduum in the spring of 1300. The Roman poet Virgil guides him through Hell and Purgatory; Beatrice, Dante's ideal woman, guides him through Heaven. Beatrice was a real Florentine woman whom he met in childhood and admired from afar in the mode of the then-fashionable courtly love tradition which is highlighted in Dante's earlier work La Vita Nuova.

The Prince is a political treatise by the Florentine public servant and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. It was written in 1513, but not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death. The Prince is widely regarded as one of the most influential books on politics, especially on the acquisition, perpetuation, and use of political power. Machiavelli's observations continue to resonate with politicians, students, and scholars. Not intending his writing to be a scholarly treatise on political theory, Machiavelli wrote The Prince to gain the favor of the ruling Medici family, offering advice on how a prince might gain and keep power. Machiavelli justified rule by force rather than by law. Accordingly, The Prince seems to justify a number of actions done merely to perpetuate power. It is a classic study of power - how to get it, expand it and use it for maximum effect.

The Decameron is a collection of 100 novellas by Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio, probably begun in 1350 and finished in 1353. It is a medieval allegorical work best known for its bawdy tales of love, appearing in all its possibilities from the erotic to the tragic. Other topics such as wit and witticism, practical jokes, the moral degeneracy of the clergy and worldly initiation also form part of the mosaic. Many notable writers such as Shakespeare and Chaucer are said to have borrowed from The Decameron.
"The Decameron" follows ten charming young Florentines who escape the ravages of the plague by retreating to an idyllic villa in the Italian countryside. There, they regale each other with a hundred stories of love, adventure, twists of fortune and the miserable ecstasy of desire. Written amid one of history's darkest periods, "The Decameron" defied the moral conventions and bleak outlook of its age with its sparkling tales of bawdy humor, ribald pursuits and, above all, a voracious appetite for life, all centered around a group of ten youthful, imaginative, hopeful, passionate Italians.

German

Vom Kriege (On War) is a book on war and military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830, and published posthumously by his wife in 1832. On War is actually an unfinished work; Clausewitz had set about revising his accumulated manuscripts in 1827, but did not live to finish the task. His wife eventually compiled all the work and the final two chapters Clausewitz never finished.
On War is one of the first books on modern military strategy. This is mainly due to Clausewitz' integration of politics, social and economic issues as some of the most important factors in deciding the outcomes of a war. It is one of the most important treatises on strategy ever written, and is prescribed at various military academies to this day.

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