Great Novels One Has Never Heard Of

(((Normally, when I read a list of "obscure" books, I've heard of most of 'em;
or at least their authors... In the case of this list, I'm pretty much at sea, which makes me think this must be a pretty good list.)))

Link: How did we miss these? | By genre | Guardian Unlimited Books.

Sunday September 2, 2007The Observer

"The afterlife of books and writers is an enthralling subject full of strange vicissitudes and unintended consequences, as even the most cursory reflection on the life and reputation of Shakespeare suggests. It's also a story of forgotten bestsellers, fashionable names swept into oblivion and overlooked figures growing in posthumous stature.

The underexplored fact of literary life is that most books fail, in at least two ways. First, they do not live up to their authors' high expectations. Writers who are honest concede that most typescripts represent the wreck of a grander, just partially fulfilled idea. Second, the majority of books fall stillborn from the press, never living up to their authors' hopes for recognition or dreams of a large, admiring audience.

So those bestseller lists and crowded festival appearances create a misleading impression of the true circumstances of literary life. For every book that tickles public taste, captures the zeitgeist and hits the jackpot, there are thousands that do not appeal to contemporary readers, fail to find a sufficient audience and almost disappear....

Pig and Pepper (1936)

David Footman

"The most neglected 20th-century novel I know is Pig and Pepper, published in 1936, reprinted in 1954 and never since. It has always had its champions. We form bonds with each other and nobody ever gives their copy away.

"It is about a young English vice-consul in the Balkans between the wars. He is clever yet an innocent. The little country is ramshackle - full of crooks and drunks and tarts alongside the tiny, black-tie British establishment. Two characters you never forget: Miss Fraser, the Balkan nationalist eccentric Englishwoman and Colonel CP Vickery, the charismatic, thumping crook who briefly lights the stage. Pig and Pepper, submerged by the Second World War and afterwards overtaken by the antihero, angry-young-men novels of the Fifties, is subtitled 'a comedy of youth' but there is nothing of halcyon days about it.

"It is very funny - much funnier than Kingsley Amis - but also sad, sweet and accomplished. And it is not parochial. It is as assured as Evelyn Waugh. It describes ruthlessness, honour, danger and different cultures. It respects the reader, doesn't comment or explain. It taught me economy of narrative. Fiction was a small part of Footman's life. He rose high at the Foreign Office (CMG), became Emeritus Fellow of St Anthony's College Oxford and is the historian of the Soviet Union. For many years, he was a spy. Every good account of the Kim Philby affair seems to mention Footman. He died in 1983. There seem to be no plans for a new edition of his marvellous novel."