Quote:
Originally Posted by Rizla
Incidentally, Tolkien was South African-British, not American. It's funny the OP begins the thread with that marker.
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Does South Africa claim Tolkien? He was born there to English parents, but I think he was pretty much English through and through.
But I don't read the title as claiming that these authors were all American - Pasternak wasn't, nor was Remarque - rather, it's about literary culture in America.
But this made me wonder whether there was a change in foreign authors being popular in the US since '77 (or some other date). But it looks like that's not really the case; even in the last ten years you get Khaled Hosseini (okay, he's American, but he moved here when he was 15) and Stieg Larsson, whose book was popular in translation.
(And of course you can't judge American literary culture on books that happen to be bestsellers in one particular year - I wonder whether E.T. ('82) or Return of the Jedi ('83) are even in print. And of course (as others have mentioned) there are many books which have sold consistently over the years, even though they weren't the most popular book in any particular year (i.e. Lord of the Rings).)