They Seconded the Notion of Not Using Their First Language

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Joseph Conrad (Bettmann/Getty Images).

It’s hard enough to write books. But writing them without using your first language? Impressive!

I was thinking about that last week while reading The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, who spoke his native Polish as well as French from childhood but wrote his fiction in English — a language he didn’t learn until he was in his 20s. Still, Conrad’s English writing was quite elegant and far from simple in works that also included such books as Heart of Darkness (which helped inspire the movie Apocalypse Now) and Lord Jim.

The Russian-born Vladimir Nabokov actually wrote his first nine novels in Russian before turning to English — the language of his most famous work, Lolita. But Nabokov’s dexterity in English was especially exceptional in his later novel Pale Fire.

Jhumpa Lahiri, the British-American daughter of immigrants from India, wrote her Pulitzer Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies short-story collection and her novels The Namesake and The Lowland in English. Then she went on to learn Italian, and authored a novel in that language titled Dove mi trovo (later self-translated into English as Whereabouts).

Afghanistan-born Khaled Hosseini, a teen when his family immigrated to the U.S., was a native Farsi speaker who wrote The Kite Runner and his other novels in English.

Kazuo Ishiguro was a native Japanese speaker whose family moved to England when he was five. The Nobel Prize in literature recipient wrote The Remains of the Day and his other subtle novels in English.

Chinua Achebe of Things Fall Apart fame was a native speaker of Igbo in Nigeria who wrote primarily in English.

Canadian-born Yann Martel, best known for authoring the novel Life of Pi, was a native French speaker who would go on to write in English.

Like Conrad, Jerzy Kosinski was born in Poland but gained fame as a writer in English — with his best-known work the novel Being There.

Anyway, that’s a small sampling — and one that mostly includes authors who became English wordsmiths. Any further examples of this topic, including authors who ended up writing in non-English languages? Any other thoughts on this topic?

Misty the cat says: “I must eat after a claw-trimming shrank my weight from 17 pounds to one ounce.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. šŸ™‚ )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: šŸ™‚

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir focusing on cartooning and more that includes many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a local “No Kings” rally, the reopening of a vintage movie theater, and more — is here.

109 thoughts on “They Seconded the Notion of Not Using Their First Language”

  1. We don’t have Fussy Cat brand here.

    So far she likes many flavours, but doesn’t always want the one I pick. So, I end up opening 2 or 3 tins. Of course I refrigerate the no-gos, and later palm them off as a stew by mixing with hot water. That works 75% of the time.

    Cold plates are a no go.

    She’s so special. Many, many, many, many litters ago, her great grandma was a pure bred Russian Blue. I’m sure of it.

    Unfortunately, she thinks she still is.

    It’s hard to argue with her, When the sun shines on her fur, it turns blue. Amazing!

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  4. Interesting topic, Dave. It is impressive when people speak 2 or more languages fluently, let alone write in a foreign langugae.

    I sure like Heart of Darkness, and Lolita. If I was never told, I’d never had known. They write better in English than many who write in English and English is their native tongue.

    Apparently Jack Kerouac (Jean-Louis Lebris de KĆ©rouac, French Canadian) began writing on the road in French, then began it over in English.

    Oscar Wilde wrote Salome in French, and he was Irish. He was avoiding English censors at the time.

    Okay, Misha wants me to tell you to tell Misty, she caught a mouse today. However, it escaped her paws, because she has no claws. Also, Misty’s food looks mighty tasty!

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  5. Hi Dave, I have read several books translated to English like Danteā€™s Inferno. I have enjoyed them provided the translation is good. Non-English first language writers can make their prose a little stiff and formal as that is how we are taught to speak another language. It lacks the relaxed jargon and simplicity of English spoken by native speakers.

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  6. Weirdly enough, Tolstoy’s first language was… French. Most of the Russian aristocracy lived ib a completely different cultural bubble then the rest of their countrymen. This was one of the main controversies inWarand Piece when this attitude was challenged when Napoleon envaded their country.

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  7. Another example of a brilliant writer writing in his second language is Abraham Verghese, who wrote THE COVENANT OF WATER and CUTTING FOR STONE. I’ve read the former book and thought it was wonderful. Haven’t read the latter yet. Verghese’s parents were Indians from Kerala, speaking Malayalam but living in Ethiopia. His first language was Malayalam, and his first profession was physician. He’s currently a professor of medicine at Stanford University.

    I feel enormous respect, even awe, for people who can write books in a language not their mother tongue. I’ve been speaking German in Switzerland for 35 years, but I still could never write one of my mysteries in German–they’re all in English.

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    • Thank you, Kim! I appreciate the mention of Abraham Verghese; that’s quite a background he has! And interesting to hear about another writer who has been a doctor, too. Like Khaled Hosseini, Anton Chekhov, Arthur Conan Doyle, William Carlos Williams, etc.

      Also interesting to hear that after all your years of speaking German in Switzerland that you still prefer to write your books in English. I totally understand!

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  8. What an interesting post! I loved Yann Martel’sĀ Life of Pi, and actually had no idea that he was French speaker who wrote in English! What a talented writer it must take to write in more than one language. As if it wasn’t hard enough to write in one’s own language to begin with!

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    • Thank you, Ada! I also really liked “Life of Pi,” and also wasn’t aware of Yann Martel’s language “journey” until I researched this post. I’m assuming the tiger on Pi’s boat wasn’t multilingual, but who knows? šŸ™‚

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  9. It’s an extra achievement to compose fine literature in a second language to your native tongue! Dave, this is an interesting topic! ‘Things Fall Apart’ and ‘The Kite Runner’ are two of my all-time favourite books in this category!!! You have mentioned some very good books! Wonderful post! Thanks Dave. With best wishes for a great week.

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  10. Many thanks, Dave, for your creative and interestening post! You mentioned various of my beloved books, such as “Heart of Darkness” and I have never known that his native language was Polish!
    Concerning your topic, the Sirian writer Rafik Shami, who writes in German, comes to my mind. The book I read has the title “Die dunkle Seite der Liebe ” or The dark side of love. It is about a love that is not allowed and about the history of Syria.

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  12. Jack Kerouac’s first language was French–I think his family was French Canadian–and evidently he also wrote poetry in French, although I have never actually seen any of it.
    I’m sure there must be other French Canadian writers who grew up speaking French but ended up writing also in English. I would imagine there are also Latino writers who grew up in primarily Spanish-speaking but bilingual households in the United States who end up writing books in English. (K)

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    • Thank you, Kerfe! Didn’t know that about Jack Kerouac! And, yes, I’m sure there have been other French-Canadian writers, and Hispanic-American writers, who have gone the authoring-books-in-their-second-languages route.

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  14. Stieg Larson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was first published in Swedish. Grimm’s fairy tales were written in German. Tolstoy’s War And Peace as well as Dostoevsky’s Crime And Punishment were written in Russian. Too bad I can’t read anything other than English. That said, I’m certain I would discover a totally different book altogether, which in some ways reminds me of Ken Liu’s short story, The Paper Menagerie. Great theme Dave. Susi

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    • Thank you, Susi! I share your situation of only being able to read books in English. I could probably semi-understand some lines of a novel in Spanish, but nowhere near a whole chapter.

      As for “War and Peace,” any translator had quite a lengthy job. šŸ™‚

      I LOVED the three books in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” etc.). Total page-turners!

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  15. Two Ishiguro novels, ” Klara and The Sun” and ” Never Let Me Go” are dystopian and are still in my memory as haunting reads that can happen in real life particularly with AI and Klara novel. Prescient.

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    • Thank you, Michele! One day I should read “Klara and The Sun.” As I mentioned elsewhere in comments, I was very impressed with the heartbreaking premise of “Never Let Me Go,” but had a hard time getting through the novel for whatever reason.

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  16. Dave, your post touched on a question Iā€™ve been thinking about for years ā€” how language itself shapes the nature of a book.

    A few years ago, I read Three Apples Fell from the Sky by Narine Abgaryan, originally written in Russian and later translated into twelve languages. Itā€™s a deeply textured novel, poetic, folkloric, and quietly mystical. And as I read, I couldnā€™t help but wonder how much of its cadence and warmth was transformed in translation. Was the humour the same? The tenderness? Or do we, as readers, simply hear a new melody echoing through another instrument?

    Your mention of writers who chose a second language reminded me of Samuel Beckett, who wrote many of his later works in French because, as he said, English made it come too easy. The French language offered greater clarity.

    I often think translation and linguistic reinvention are forms of rebirth, not perfect mirrors, but continuations of meaning across cultures. Each language has its own emotional temperature, its own way of holding silence, irony, or hope.

    My favourite quote from Three Apples Fell from the Sky captures the essence of storytelling: ā€œAnd three apples fell from heaven: One for the storyteller, One for the listener, And one for the eavesdropper.ā€

    As always, a great post and follow-up discussion.

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    • Thank you, Rebecca! Very well said, and much matiĆØre Ć  rĆ©flexion/food for thought. (A tip of the hat to Google Translate. šŸ™‚ ) I appreciate the mention of Narine Abgaryan’s “Three Apples Fell from the Sky,” which has been on my to-read list for quite a while.

      Like you, I wonder with translations how much of the original work is captured; it of course partly depends on the skill of the translator. I remember reading Alexander Pushkin’s poem-novel “Eugene Onegin” a few years ago — I think on the recommendation of the great, no-longer-blogging (?) ElisabethĀ van der Meer — and finding the Russian-to-English translation absolutely exceptional.

      I definitely learned something about Samuel Beckett I didn’t know before today.

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      • Dave, I really miss Elisabeth van der Meer! She was the one who first recommended Three Apples Fell from the Sky to me. She had such a remarkable way of introducing writers whose work lingered long after you closed the book. Iā€™m so glad you mentioned Eugene Onegin. Translations like that remind us how much artistry lies not only in the original words but in the act of carrying them across languages. Thank you again for a great post and follow-up discussion.

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        • Yes, Elisabeth and her superb “A Russian Affair” blog are very missed. I imagine she’s doing other kinds of interesting, important work, whatever that might be. I agree that book translators are artists in of themselves, and of course some of them write their own books as well.

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  17. An interesting theme, Dave. Kudos to authors who write novels in their second language, considering it’s already a challenge to write a novel in one’s first language. Of the authors you’ve mentioned, I’ve only read the impressive novels in English by Khaled Hosseini and Kazuo Ishiguro.

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    • Thank you, Rosaliene! You’re so right that “itā€™s already a challenge to write a novel in oneā€™s first language.” And I agree that the novels of Khaled Hosseini and Kazuo Ishiguro are impressive (though, as I mentioned elsewhere in this comments section, I wasn’t a total fan of the latter’s “Never Let Me Go”).

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  18. I don’t know any Indian writer who has English as a first language (India is home to several hundred languages). Even not Salman Rushdie, whose first language is Urdu. Didn’t hamper him to become a Noble – and Booker Prize winner for his contributions to the English – and World literature.

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  19. I’ll have to give it some thought, as usual, Dave; sleeping on the question usually helps. I’m always awestruck by anybody who’s able to master another language to the extent of being able to write in it, ike Joseph Conrad. I speak, read and write two languages other than my own, but I’m far from fluent. I’ve tried translating paragraphs from books in those lanaguages into English, which takes forever with laughable results. I take my hat off therefore to those incredible souls . A fascinating subject and I’ll be back if any examples come to me. šŸ™‚

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  20. The English-language writer Samuel Beckett, born in Ireland, alternated between English and French in his writing and personally translated many of his French works into English.

    He chose to write his most famous mature works, such as Waiting for Godot, in French because he said he wanted to achieve greater stylistic economy.

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  21. I was born in the U.S. (Miami, Florida, to be precise), but my parents were from Colombia. After my dad died in 1965, my mom’s family (my grands, specifically) convinced her to move back to Bogota and live close to my aunts, uncles, and cousins. So, from 1966 to early 1972, I lived in a place where English was rarely spoken and not easy to learn. We returned to the States in the spring of 1972, and I had to learn English as a second language, even though I was a U.S. citizen by birth and conviction.

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    • Thank you, Alex! That’s a really interesting U.S.-to-Colombia-to-U.S. background, but sorry the cause of that was a tragic death. Nice to be so grounded in two cultures, even though that might not always have been easy.

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      • Looking back on my “two childhoods,” as I like to call that era, I find it paradoxically that even though I was born and lived in Miami for my first three years, I also have the perspective of an immigrant. As I mentioned earlier, I came back to the States as a nine-year-old with little knowledge of English, even though my school in Colombia had mandatory English courses in its curriculum. And it was a Catholic private school, so my understanding of the real world comes from my experiences as a kid who went to public schools in South Florida.

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        • A dual native/immigrant perspective can be a good thing, I imagine, Alex. And I think going to a public school is almost always the best alternative when the student gets a good education while being in more of a “real world” atmosphere.

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          • Looking back at my early “Americanization” between 1972 and 1973, it really was as though I had two childhoods. School libraries, schools with hundreds of students in a big campus (with a huge cafeteria to match), and no religion classes were, for me, liberating. I don’t remember if Colegio El Nogal (which had less than 100 K-6 students and a campus which had once been a large private house) even had a library. If it did, I don’t recall visiting it. At Coral Park and Tropical Elementaries, I spent quite a bit of time in the library. Plus, I checked out books!

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  23. I can’t think of any authors or titles to add to the list, but I agree that it’s admirable that so many authors whose first language wasn’t English have contributed to literature in that language. Writing well is a challenge even in one’s own language!

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  25. Of the books you mention, I most remember “Heart of Darkness”, which impressed me in high school in the 1960s. Since then, I have read “Things Fall Apart”.
    Unfortunately Americans generally don’t have the language skills to read literature written in other languages, so I’m glad these foreigeners have been able to share their perspectives in American English.

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    • Thank you, Katharine! Yes, “Heart of Darkness” is a pretty impressive read. And I agree that Americans in general (some exceptions obviously) are not as interested in learning other languages, and reading in other languages, as people from many other countries are.

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  26. I am always impressed by this and you gave some excellent examples. One of my favourite writers, Michael Ondaatje, who wrote The English Patient and many other amazing books, writes in English although his first language was Sri Lankan.

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    • Thank you, Darlene! Michael Ondaatje is an example of this I wasn’t aware of! I read “The English Patient” a number of years ago and thought it was pretty compelling, but have never seen the famous movie version.

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      • I have read just about everything Michael Ondaatje has written including some poetry collections. He is such a great writer. You mentioned Kazuo Ishiguro, another writer who is exceptional. I just finished When We Were Orphans. He uses English better than many English born writers.

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        • I guess I should try something else by Michael Ondaatje. šŸ™‚ And I totally agree about Kazuo Ishiguro’s facility with language. I loved “The Remains of the Day” — low-key yet riveting — although I did find “Never Let Me Go” a bit of a slog even though the plot premise was depressingly amazing.

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  27. Sometimes I wish I could blame English not being my first language for some of the grammatical errors that slip through. Alas, it’s just me not paying attention to the details. I can’t imagine learning a second (or third) language well enough to write a novel. I remember when I took German in high school. The fourth year focused on literature and culture. It’s where the instructor tried to show us the nuances in the words chosen by the authors. Unfortunately the books and stories she chose were so dark, I almost couldn’t care.

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    • Thank you, Dan! I hear you — it’s also hard for me to imagine writing a book in a language other than my native English when it’s hard enough to write one in English. šŸ™‚

      Sorry about your German experience in high school. I haven’t read a large number of German authors, but the ones I have read (such as Erich Maria Remarque) have been rather grim even when they’re excellent.

      I took French and then Spanish in high school, and was not a “language person.” I did do somewhat better in Spanish, which is ironic given that I would eventually marry a French professor. šŸ™‚

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