Continental European literary novelists

Giorgio Bassani

Giorgio Bassani (1916–2000) was an Italian writer and poet whose fiction centers on Ferrara's Jewish community under fascism; his best-known novel is Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini.

Giovanni Verga

Giovanni Verga (1840–1922), Catania novelist and short-story writer, leading exponent of Italian verismo; author of I Malavoglia, Mastro-don Gesualdo, Vita dei campi, and Cavalleria rusticana.

Giuseppe Antonio Borgese

Giuseppe Antonio Borgese (1882–1952) was an Italian literary critic, novelist, and journalist best known for the novel Rubè (1921) and the anti-fascist study Goliath (1937).

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896–1957) was a Sicilian aristocrat, duke of Palma and prince of Lampedusa, whose only novel, Il Gattopardo, won the 1959 Strega Prize after his death.

Gleb Uspensky, full name Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky (Глеб Иванович Успенский), was a Russian prose writer and publicist, born in Tula in 1843, whose village sketch cycles made him an authority on the peasant question.

Goffredo Parise

Goffredo Parise (1929–1986) was an Italian writer and journalist from Vicenza who won the Premio Viareggio for Il padrone and the Premio Strega in 1982.

Gösta Carlberg

Gösta Carlberg (1909–1973) was a Swedish novelist, poet, and essayist whose debut novel won Bonniers' 15,000-kronor jubilee prize, and who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1940.

Gottfried Keller

Gottfried Keller (1819–1890) was a Swiss novelist and poet of German expression, born and died in Zürich, best known for Der grüne Heinrich and Die Leute von Seldwyla.

Grazia Deledda

Grazia Deledda (1871-1936), Sardinian novelist from Nuoro, winner of the 1926 Nobel Prize in Literature as the second woman laureate and only Italian woman; author of Canne al vento, La madre, and Cosima.

Gregorios Xenopoulos

Gregorios Xenopoulos (Γρηγόριος Ξενόπουλος) was a Greek novelist, playwright, and journalist who wrote more than 80 novels and about 35 plays and founded the magazine Nea Estia in 1927.

Guðbergur Bergsson

Guðbergur Bergsson (1932–2023) was an Icelandic writer and translator who pioneered modernist prose in Iceland with novels like Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller, and translated Don Quixote into Icelandic.

Guðmundur G. Hagalín

Guðmundur G. Hagalín was an Icelandic novelist and librarian best known for novels of rural life in western Iceland, above all Kristrún í Hamravík (1933).

Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir

Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir (born 1976) is an Icelandic novelist and short story writer whose work is translated into more than a dozen languages; she won the Icelandic Literary Prize in 2011.

Gunnar Gunnarsson

Gunnar Gunnarsson (1889–1975) was an Icelandic novelist and short-story writer who wrote mostly in Danish while living in Denmark, winning European acclaim and becoming Iceland's best-selling author abroad.

Günter Grass

Günter Grass (1927-2015), German novelist and graphic artist of the Danzig trilogy (Die Blechtrommel, Katz und Maus, Hundejahre), Nobel Literature laureate 1999; revealed in 2006 his teenage Waffen-SS service.

Gustav Frenssen

Gustav Frenssen (1863–1945) was a German novelist and former Lutheran pastor whose Dithmarschen peasant novels, especially Jörn Uhl (1901), made him one of Germany's most-read writers.

Gustav Freytag

Gustav Freytag (1816–1895), German novelist, dramatist, and journalist of Die Grenzboten; author of Soll und Haben, Die Journalisten, Die Ahnen, and Die Technik des Dramas, source of Freytag's pyramid.

Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), French novelist of Croisset, author of Madame Bovary (1857, tried for obscenity and acquitted), Salammbô, L'Éducation sentimentale, and Bouvard et Pécuchet; known for le mot juste and free indirect style.

Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was a French writer, disciple of Flaubert, author of nearly 300 short stories and six novels including Boule de suif, Bel-Ami, Pierre et Jean, and Le Horla.

György Konrád

György Konrád, published in English as George Konrád, was a Hungarian novelist, essayist, and sociologist whose debut novel The Case Worker (1969) drew on his work as a children's welfare supervisor.

Gyula Krúdy

Gyula Krúdy (Krúdy Gyula, 1878–1933) was a Hungarian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist, a master of modern Hungarian prose best known for the Szindbád cycle.

H. C. Branner

H. C. Branner, full name Hans Christian Branner, was a Danish writer (1903–1966) known for psychologically probing novels and for raising the radio play to a serious art form.

Hafid Bouazza

Hafid Bouazza (1970–2021) was a Moroccan-born Dutch writer of novels, stories, plays, essays, and translations whose exuberant prose won the Gouden Uil prize for Paravion (2003).

Hakan Günday

Hakan Günday (born 1976) is a Turkish novelist and screenwriter known for his dark underground literature, especially Daha, which won France's Prix Médicis in 2015.

Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil

Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil, also written Halit Ziya, was a Turkish novelist and founder of the modern Turkish novel, author of Mai ve Siyah and Aşk-ı Memnu.

Halldór Laxness

Halldór Kiljan Laxness (Halldór Guðjónsson, 1902–1998) was Iceland's leading twentieth-century novelist, Nobel laureate in Literature 1955, author of Independent People, Salka Valka, and Iceland's Bell.

Hanne Ørstavik

Hanne Ørstavik (born 1969) is a Norwegian novelist whose books have been translated into more than 30 languages and won the Gyldendal Prize in 2023.

Hans E. Kinck

Hans E. Kinck (Hans Ernst Kinck, 1865–1926) was a Norwegian novelist, short-story writer, dramatist, and essayist who renewed Norwegian prose through dialect and psychological fiction.

Hans Erich Nossack

Hans Erich Nossack (1901–1977) was a German writer from Hamburg whose eyewitness report Der Untergang, written weeks after the 1943 firebombing of Hamburg, made him immediately famous.