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Unrecognised In Their Own Countries

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    Unrecognised In Their Own Countries

    The Irish historian, Ian Gibson, has enjoyed an illustrious academic and commercial career for many decades, yet because he has dedicated his life to the exploration of the Spanish Civil War, living in Iberia for many decades and writing predominantly in Spanish, his success has largely gone unrecognised back in his homeland. Similarly, even after 1994, Nadine Gordimer arguably continued to receive greater accolades internationally than within South Africa, and Tahar Ben Jelloun has enjoyed significantly higher prominence in France than in his native Morocco. But are there many more literary prophets, either present or historical, whose overseas reception is in stark contrast to their current domestic reputation?

    #2
    Is Salman Rushdie highly regarded in India?

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      #3
      Not really a literary prophet, but I get the sense that Bill Bryson is more popular in the UK then in the USA.

      More in the prophet role, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn probably had a larger readership outside his homeland, for obvious reasons.

      I don't know if The Kite Runner has ever had a release in Afghanistan. 7 million copies sold in the USA.

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        #4
        There are a few Indian writers who have been living mainly in the UK and/or US and whose work might be suppressed in India: Amartya Sen, for example. That same rule can be applied to anywhere with a repressive regime.

        Numerous Caribbean-born intellectuals probably had a wider audience in the UK, where they lived and worked, e.g. Stuart Hall. OTOH these children of Empire were born as British citizens.

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          #5
          I feel like I’ve read that Patrick Leigh Fermor was basically revered in Greece rather than just being the kind of travel writer that maybe 10% of the population have heard of in Britain. This could, of course, be nonsense.

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            #6
            Jonathan coe is very well regarded in France and has won many literary awards there. I like to think that there are many French people who have an excellent working knowledge of Birmingham in the 1970s.

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              #7
              Julian Green was the first non-French national to be elected to Académie Française, but is virtually unknown in the US.

              https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julien_Green

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                #8
                'More famous in France than in their own country' is likely to apply to a lot of writers what with the greater importance of literature and philosophy in public life there than in many other countries. The first two examples that came to mind were Beckett and Ionesco - while they're obviously not unrecognised in their countries of birth, they're unbelievably famous and revered in France and their works are mainstays of the school curriculum

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