Continental European literary novelists

Antonio Fogazzaro

Antonio Fogazzaro (1842–1911) was an Italian novelist, poet, and senator from Vicenza, ranked after Verga as the greatest late-19th-century Italian novelist; his Il Santo was placed on the Index.

António Lobo Antunes (1942–2026), Portuguese novelist and psychiatrist, debuted in 1979 with Memória de Elefante and Os Cus de Judas; served 27 months as an army doctor in Angola, which shaped his fiction; won the Prémio Camões in 2007 and wrote more than 30 novels translated into over fifteen languages.

Antonio Muñoz Molina

Antonio Muñoz Molina (born 1956) is a Spanish writer, a member of the Real Academia Española and winner of the 2013 Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras.

Antonio Skármeta

Antonio Skármeta (1940–2024) was a Chilean novelist and diplomat whose novel Ardiente paciencia inspired the 1994 film Il Postino; he won Chile's National Literature Prize in 2014.

Antonio Tabucchi

Antonio Tabucchi (1943–2012) was an Italian novelist, essayist, and translator who taught Portuguese literature and became the leading Italian editor and translator of Fernando Pessoa.

Ánxel Fole

Ánxel Fole (1903–1986) was a Galician writer and journalist, a master of the short story in Galician who blended oral tradition with influences like Poe, co-founding Editorial Galaxia.

Apuleius

Apuleius (Lucius Apuleius, c. 123 to c. 170) was a Roman writer and Platonist philosopher from Madauros in North Africa, author of The Golden Ass.

Aquilino Ribeiro

Aquilino Ribeiro (1885–1963) was a Portuguese novelist whose fiction rooted in the Beira Alta highlands made him a leading prose writer of the 20th century.

Ari Behn

Ari Behn (Ari Mikael Bjørshol, 1972–2019), Norwegian author and visual artist best known for the 1999 story collection Trist som faen; married Princess Märtha Louise 2002–2017 and published seven books.

Armando Palacio Valdés

Armando Palacio Valdés (1853–1938) was a Spanish realist novelist and critic, a member of the Real Academia Española best known for La hermana San Sulpicio.

Arne Garborg

Arne Garborg, born Aadne Garborg, was a Norwegian writer, journalist, and translator, a farmer's son from Jæren who became a leading Nynorsk advocate and author of Bondestudentar and Haugtussa.

Arno Schmidt

Arno Otto Schmidt (1914–1979) was a German novelist, essayist, and translator, one of postwar German literature's most idiosyncratic experimental writers, best known for the three-column monumental novel Zettel's Traum.

Arnold Zweig

Arnold Zweig (1887–1968) was a German-Jewish novelist and anti-war writer whose 1927 novel Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa became a defining war novel of the Weimar Republic.

Arnon Grunberg

Arnon Grunberg, full name Arnon Yasha Yves Grünberg, is a Dutch writer born in Amsterdam in 1971 whose novel Tirza won the Gouden Uil and Libris prizes.

Arnošt Lustig

Arnošt Lustig (1926–2011) was a Czech Jewish novelist, screenwriter, and professor who survived Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, wrote over twenty Holocaust books, and won the 2008 Franz Kafka Prize.

Arthur van Schendel

Arthur van Schendel (1874–1946) was a Dutch novelist, born in Batavia and long resident in Italy, whose Holland novels made him one of the most honored Dutch writers of the 1930s.

Arvid Järnefelt

Arvid Järnefelt (1861–1932) was a Finnish jurist turned novelist and Tolstoyan social reformer who abandoned his legal career in 1891 and wrote the acclaimed debut novel Isänmaa (1893).

Arvo Valton

Arvo Valton, pen name of Arvo Vallikivi (1935–2024), was an Estonian writer considered a founder of Estonian modern prose, known for grotesque stories satirizing the Soviet regime.

August Gailit

August Gailit (1891–1960) was an Estonian novelist and short-story writer, best known for Toomas Nipernaadi (1928) and Ekke Moor, and a founding member of the Siuru literary group of 1917.

August Šenoa

August Šenoa (1838–1881) was a Croatian novelist, poet, and journalist of Zagreb, regarded as the founder of the modern Croatian novel, best known for the historical novel Zlatarovo zlato (1871).

Axel Bakunts

Axel Bakunts (Ակսել Բակունց), born Alexander Tevosyan, was an Armenian short-story writer and agronomist known for stories of Zangezur village life, executed in Stalin's Great Purge in 1937.

B. Traven

B. Traven, pseudonym of a German-Mexican novelist also known as Ret Marut, author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Death Ship; twelve novels, 40 million copies, identity still disputed.

Benito Pérez Galdós

Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920), Spanish Realist novelist, dramatist and Republican politician from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, considered Spain's greatest novelist after Cervantes; author of the 46-volume Episodios nacionales and Fortunata y Jacinta.

Bernardo Atxaga

Bernardo Atxaga, pen name of Joseba Irazu Garmendia (born 1951), is a Spanish writer who works entirely in Basque; his collection Obabakoak (1988) brought Basque literature its widest audience.

Bernhard Schlink

Bernhard Schlink (born 1944, Bielefeld) is a German novelist and retired professor of public law, formerly a judge on the NRW Constitutional Court. Known for the Selb crime trilogy and Der Vorleser (The Reader, 1995), the first German number-one New York Times bestseller, filmed in 2008.