What are the best books and book series originally released in languages other than English (but which have an English translation) in the genre of high Fantasy?
I love the Chinese book “Unsheathed” (or Sword of Coming), it’s a high fantasy (xianxia) novel with great writing. However, the English translation is not yet finished, currently around book 6 of 11 (which is about more than 4000 pages of writing). It’s a story about a contryside orphan boy living in a small village starting to realize that the stories of gods, dragons, and immortals he heard about in folk tales and legends are actually all true, and that the world beyong the village is magical and fantastical in many ways.
The absolute best non-english book I’ve ever read so far is The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s a French writer and I read it in Arabic, because the English translation one was really hard to understand. That book genuinely messed with my emotions.
More dark/urban fantasy than high fantasy, but the Night Watch series by Sergey Lukyanenko, originally published in Russian.
Kicks the crap out of Twilight.
Witcher series was originally in Polish
Tintenherz (Inkheart) by Cornelia Funke [fantasy, but probably not high fantasy]
Die unendliche Geschichte (The Neverending Story) by Michael Ende
I liked The Dwarves (Die Zwerge) from Markus Heitz, though I don’t know if that counts as high fantasy
No recommendations, but I’m very interested in what people can suggest.
I kind of liked the 3 body series, originally Chinese. But that’s science fiction. The netflix version however is a highly recommended series to never watch.
