What to Read in Esperanto: The Bookshelf, In Order

Read Esperanto in order, and start lower than you think. Graded readers first, then Claude Piron's books for learners, then the classics. Most learners who give up on Esperanto books started three rungs too high.

Graded readers first

A graded reader caps its vocabulary, so new grammar arrives without a wall of new words. Every story in the Esperanto story collection has a frequency ceiling, checked by a script, so the stories get easier the further into the course you are.

When you want a whole book, the community's standard answer is Gerda malaperis! by Claude Piron (1983): a light mystery about a group of young friends and a disappearance, told in simple everyday dialogue. Esperanto Wikipedia calls it perhaps the most famous instructional story in the language.

• Gerda malaperis! - Gerda has disappeared!

Its companion, Lasu min paroli plu! (1984), reuses the same grammar and vocabulary chapter by chapter in new stories. Piron, Belgian-born and Swiss, was a UN translator and later a psychologist, and the books read like the work of somebody who knew what an overloaded reader does: stop.

Piron again: short stories and crime

Vere aŭ fantazie (1989) is 44 short stories by Piron, arranged so that your vocabulary grows as you go. Each story is short enough to finish in one sitting.

Then Piron wrote crime fiction under the pen name Johán Valano, and this is the rung where reading stops being an exercise:

Every title is a yes/no question with ĉu, which is a grammar lesson in itself:

• Ĉu vi kuiras ĉine? - Do you cook Chinese-style?

The words on the cover

Talking about books takes a handful of verbs and affixes you already know:

Two verb pairs carry most sentences about a book:

• Piron verkis la romanon. - Piron wrote the novel.
• Kabe tradukis la romanon el la pola. - Kabe translated the novel from Polish.
• Fonto eldonis la libron. - Fonto published the book.
• La libro aperis en 1983. - The book came out in 1983.

Eldoni takes an object: a publisher brings a book out. Aperi takes none: the book itself appears.

Mistakes with these words

The translation classics

Esperanto's early writers proved the language could carry serious prose by making it carry other people's:

Kabe was Kazimierz Bein, a Polish eye doctor, vice-president of the Akademio and author of the Vortaro de Esperanto (1910), one of the first dictionaries written entirely in Esperanto. In 1911 he left the movement without giving a reason, and the language made a verb of his name:

• kabei - to leave the movement after being an active member.

Marta is Orzeszkowa's novel of a widow raising her daughter alone and struggling to earn a living. The Londona Biblio of 1926 put Zamenhof's Old Testament, translated from the Hebrew, beside a New Testament translated by a committee of English and Scottish clergy.

• Zamenhof tradukis la Malnovan Testamenton. - Zamenhof translated the Old Testament.

Spoken Esperanto has more on kabei.

The original novels

Translations prove a language can carry a book; original novels prove it can produce one.

Baghy was himself a prisoner of war in Siberia from 1915 to 1920. Vojaĝo al Kazohinio appeared in Hungarian in 1941 and in Esperanto in 1958, and which came first is disputed: the presentation in the first Esperanto edition says Szathmári began it in Hungarian in 1935 and finished it in Esperanto. Gulliver meets the Hins, rational and without art, money or love, and the Behins, who are anything but.

• Szathmári verkis la romanon hungare kaj esperante. - Szathmári wrote the novel in Hungarian and in Esperanto.

The poetry

Kálmán Kalocsay led the Budapest school around the magazine and publisher Literatura Mondo. His Streĉita kordo (1931) is one of the outstanding collections of original Esperanto poetry.

William Auld's La infana raso (1956) is a book-length poem on humanity as a species, partly inspired by Pound's Cantos. Auld also edited the anthology Esperanta antologio (1958, second edition 1984).

• Kalocsay verkis bonegan poemaron. - Kalocsay wrote an excellent book of poems.

The Nobel claim. On a proposal made at the 1998 meeting of the writers' association EVA, Auld was put forward as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature from 1999 until his death in 2006. Whether a valid nomination reached the Swedish Academy cannot be checked: its nomination records stay sealed for fifty years. A real campaign, then, and a nomination nobody can yet confirm.

Poetic Esperanto covers the elision and rhyme these poets use.

Magazines and where to get books

A magazine arrives, is finished and arrives again, which is how reading becomes a habit:

• Mi abonas la revuon Monato. - I subscribe to the magazine Monato.

Buying. The UEA book service at katalogo.uea.org is the main shop. Free. Project Gutenberg has an Esperanto collection, mostly older translations. Borrowing. Local Esperanto clubs often keep a library: ask.

What to do next

1. Read the first chapter of Gerda malaperis! this week.
2. Say who wrote and who translated three books on this page, with verkis and tradukis.
3. Read a story at your chapter's level.

See also

• Esperanto stories - the graded readers this site writes, each capped to a frequency ceiling.
• Poetic Esperanto - elision, scansion and rhyme, which is what Kalocsay and Auld are doing.
• Spoken Esperanto - kabei and the rest of the in-group vocabulary.
• Who decides what is correct Esperanto? - PIV, PMEG, ReVo and the Tekstaro: the reference shelf beside this reading one.
• Esperanto hodiaŭ - the UEA and the associations that publish and sell most of these books.
• Personal names in Esperanto - why Johano looks the way it does on these covers.
• La kongreso - where the book service sets up its stall once a year.