Books From Around the World (YA): Europe

It’s often interesting to get a different perspective on the world. Here are some books set in some far-flung places – and some places close to home – grouped by continent/large body of water with islands in it. The books on this list are (mostly) written by authors from the countries they are about, and in many cases have been translated into English from their mother tongues (the book we’ve chosen for Madagascar, Return to the enchanted island by Johary Ravaloson, is only the second book to have ever been translated from Malagasy into English!).

Not all of the books are in the Young Adult collection, but we’ve tried to make sure that they all at least feature kids or teens in prominent places in the story. Our eventual goal is to have at least one book for every country in the world! Help us out by sending in recommendations if you’ve found one we’ve missed!

This list contains books written by authors from Europe. Check out our lists for authors from Africa, Asia, North and Central America, Oceania, and South America for even more recommendations!

Updated June 19, 2024
W
Wellington City LibrariesYouth team at Wellington City Libraries
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Free : a child and a country at the end of history
Ypi, Lea
Paper Book
Family and nation formed a reliable bedrock of security for precocious 11-year-old Lea Ypi. She was a Young Pioneer, helping to lead her country toward the future of perfect freedom promised by the leaders of her country, the People's Socialist Republic of Albania. Then, almost overnight, the...

Albania | Albanian author

A song for summer
Ibbotson, Eva.
Paper Book
A lyrical historical romance for fans of The English Patient Eighteen-year-old Ellen never expected the Hallendorf school to be, well, quite so unusual. After all, her life back in england with her suffragette mother and liberated aunts certainly couldn't be called normal. but...

Austria | Austrian author

Threads that bind
Hatzopoulou, Kika
Paper Book
"Dripping with atmosphere and edged with danger, Threads That Bind weaves together a gorgeous dark tapestry of mystery, fated romance, and modern myth. You won't be able to put this one down." --Alexandra Bracken, New York Times bestselling author of Lore In...

Greece | Greek author

Voices from Chernobyl : the oral history of a nuclear disaster
Aleksievich, Svetlana
Paper Book
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award On April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occurred in Chernobyl and contaminated as much as three quarters of Europe.Voices from Chernobyl is the first...

Belarus | Belarusian author

The diary of a young girl
Frank, Anne
Paper Book
One of the most moving and eloquent accounts of the Holocaust, read by tens of millions of people around the world since its publication in 1947. The Diary of a Young Girl is the record of two years in the life of a remarkable Jewish girl whose triumphant humanity in the...

The Netherlands | German-born author writing in the Netherlands during World War II

The cat I never named : a true story of love, war, and survival
Sabic-El-Rayess, Amra
Paper Book
The stunning memoir of a Muslim teen struggling to survive in the midst of the Bosnian genocide--and the stray cat who protected her family through it all. *Six Starred Reviews*"Extraordinary." - Booklist | "A must-read." - School Library...

Bosnia and Herzegovina | Bosnian author

Street without a name : childhood and other misadventures in Bulgaria
Kassabova, Kapka.
Paper Book
Kassabova was born in Sofia, Bulgaria and grew up under the drab, muddy, grey mantle of one of communism's most mindlessly authoritarian regimes. Escaping with her family as soon as possible after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, she lived in Britain, New Zealand, and Argentina, and several other...

Bulgaria | Bulgarian author

The island of missing trees
Shafak, Elif
Paper Book
A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK Winner of the 2022 BookTube Silver Medal in Fiction * Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction "A wise novel of love and grief, roots and branches, displacement and home, faith and belief. Balm for our bruised times." -David...

Cyprus | Turkish author writing in the context of the Greek-Turkish conflict on the island of Cyprus

The unbearable lightness of being
Kundera, Milan.
Paper Book
International Bestseller * Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction "Far more than a conventional novel. It is a meditation on life, on the erotic, on the nature of men and women and love . . . full of telling details, truths large and small, to which just about every...

Czechia | Czech author

The Marco effect : a Department Q novel
Adler-Olsen, Jussi
Paper Book
The New York Times and internationally bestselling author returns with an astonishing and sinister case for Department Q All fifteen-year-old Marco Jameson wants is to become a Danish citizen and go to school like a normal teenager. But his uncle Zola rules his former...

Denmark | Danish author

Catherine's war
Billet, Julia
Paper Book
"A shining story of a young girl who struggles to come of age and find her place in a world fraught with danger." --Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Newbery Honor-winning author of Hitler Youth * Winner of the Youth Prize at the Angoulême International Comics Festival (voted by readers) * Winner...

France | French author

A winter's promise
Dabos, Christelle
Paper Book
Amazon Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book of 2018 One of Entertainment Weekly's 10 Best YA Books of 2018 One of Publishers Weekly's Best YA Book of the Year A National Indie Bestseller Longlisted for Irish YA prize Great Reads Award<...

France | French author

The Count of Monte Cristo
Dumas, Alexandre
Paper Book
Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and becomes determined not only to escape but to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the...

France | French author

Dream a little dream
Gier, Kerstin
Paper Book
Liv has been dealing with a lot lately. She and her family have just moved in with her mother's new boyfriend in London, and she's starting over (again) at a new school. But Liv isn't sure that explains her dreams, which have gone from odd to...well, bizarre. Lately, her nighttime hours have been...

Germany | German author

The book jumper
Gla?ser, Mechthild
Paper Book
Amy Lennox doesn't know quite what to expect when she and her mother pick up and leave Germany for Scotland, heading to her mother's childhood home of Lennox House on the island of Stormsay. Amy's grandmother, Lady Mairead, insists that Amy must read while she resides at Lennox House...

Germany | German author

The dispossessed
Borbe?ly, Szila?rd
Paper Book
"The Dispossessed is a great sui generis book that, for all its cultural differences, touches us deeply. We recognize it as tragic, truthful and visionary wherever we are." -- George Szirtes, New York Times Book Review This hypnotic, hauntingly beautiful first novel...

Hungary | Hungarian author

The rebels
Ma?rai, Sa?ndor
Paper Book
Embers . . . Casanova in Bolzano . . . and now The Rebels: the third of the rediscovered novels of the great Hungarian writer—the jolting story of a troubled group of young men on the cusp of life, and death, in World War I. It is the summer of 1918. As graduation...

Hungary | Hungarian author

Boy on the edge
Friðrik Erlingsson
Paper Book
Can a boy on the edge find his way back? From award-winning Icelandic author Fridrik Erlings comes a novel as cruel as it is tender. Henry has a clubfoot and he is the target of relentless bullying. One day, in a violent fit of anger, Henry lashes out at the only family he has --...

Iceland | Icelandic author

Bog child
Dowd, Siobhan.
Paper Book
DIGGING FOR PEAT in the mountain with his Uncle Tally, Fergus finds the body of a child, and it looks like she’s been murdered. As Fergus tries to make sense of the mad world around him—his brother on hunger-strike in prison, his growing feelings for Cora, his parents arguing over the...

Ireland | Irish author

The solitude of prime numbers
Giordano, Paolo
Paper Book
A bestselling international literary sensation about whether a "prime number" can ever truly connect with someone else A prime number can only be divided by itself or by one--it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia, both "primes," are misfits who seem destined to be...

Italy | Italian author

Among the living and the dead : a tale of exile and homecoming on the war roads of Europe
Verzemnieks, Inara
Paper Book
"It's long been assumed of the region where my grandmother was born...that at some point each year the dead will come home," Inara Verzemnieks writes in this exquisite story of war, exile, and reconnection. Her grandmother's stories recalled one true home: the family farm left behind in Latvia,...

Latvia | Latvian author

Between shades of gray
Sepetys, Ruta.
Paper Book
The inspiration for the major motion picture Ashes in the Snow! "Few books are beautifully written, fewer still are important; this novel is both." --The Washington Post From New York Times and international bestseller and Carnegie...

Lithuania | Lithuanian-American author

On the edge of gone
Duyvis, Corinne
Paper Book
A thrilling, thought-provoking novel from one of young-adult literature's boldest new talents. January 29, 2035. That's the day the comet is scheduled to hit - the big one. Denise and her mother and sister, Iris, have been assigned to a temporary shelter outside their hometown of...

The Netherlands | Dutch author

Book club [kit] : [for Sophie's world] : a novel about the history of philosophy
Gaarder, Jostein
Paper Book
A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old...

Norway | Norwegian author

Lena, the sea and me
Parr, Maria
Paper Book
In a charming sequel to Adventures with Waffles, Trille and Lena navigate the rough waters of friendship when a new soccer coach and a new girl in school disrupt their seaside escapades. Trille and Lena may be getting older, but they still find everyday adventure--and...

Norway | Norwegian author

Flights
Tokarczuk, Olga
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE A visionary work of fiction by "A writer on the level of W. G. Sebald" (Annie Proulx) "A...

Poland | Polish author

Mr. Lightbulb
Wawszczyk, Wojtek
Paper Book
Our protagonist comes from a broken home. Quite literally. Freak accidents at the steelworks where his parents work have left his mom snapped and his dad flattened. One day, he mistakenly swallows a glob of molten metal giving himself the strange power to radiate heat and light - like a lightbulb....

Poland | Polish author-illustrator

Solenoid
Ca?rta?rescu, Mircea
Ebook

Romania | Romanian author

The hunger angel : a novel
Mu?ller, Herta.
Paper Book
A masterful new novel from the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize, hailed for depicting the "landscape of the dispossessed" with "the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose" (Nobel Prize Committee) It was an icy morning in January 1945 when the patrol came for seventeen-year...

Romania | Romanian-German author

Anya's ghost
Brosgol, Vera.
Paper Book
Anya could really use a friend. But her new BFF isn't kidding about the "Forever" part . . . Of all the things Anya expected to find at the bottom of an old well, a new friend was not one of them. Especially not a new friend who's been dead for a century. Falling down a...

Russia | Russian-American author-illustrator

The librarian of Auschwitz
Iturbe, Antonio
Paper Book
Based on the experience of real-life Auschwitz prisoner Dita Kraus, this is the incredible story of a girl who risked her life to keep the magic of books alive during the Holocaust. Fourteen-year-old Dita is one of the many imprisoned by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Taken, along...

Spain/Germany | Spanish author

Wonderful feels like this
Lo?vestam, Sara
Paper Book
Sara Lovestam's Wonderful Feels Like Thisis "a coming-of-age tale of a young artist and is as soulful as it is triumphant" (SLJ) that celebrates being a little bit odd, finding your people, and the power of music to connect us For Steffi, going to school everyday...

Sweden | Swedish author

The end
Strandberg, Mats
Paper Book
When will the world end? With a massive comet, hurtling toward Earth, humanity now knows the exact date. 17-year-old Simon wants to spend his last weeks with the people he cares about most, especially his ex-girlfriend, Tilda. Since Lucinda was diagnosed with cancer, she's retreated into herself....

Sweden | Swdish author

Heidi
Spyri, Johanna
Ebook
High in the Swiss Alps, Heidi, a five-year-old orphan, comes to live with her grandfather. His neighbors say he is a fierce old hermit, of whom they are all afraid. Heidi, however, proves to be a remarkable, unaffected child, who quickly charms her grandfather.

Switzerland | Swiss author

Vita nostra
Di?a?chenko, Marina
Audiobook
The definitive English language translation of the internationally bestselling Russian novel--a brilliant dark fantasy with "the potential to be a modern classic" (Lev Grossman), combining psychological suspense, enchantment, and terror that makes us consider human existence in a fresh and...

Ukraine | Ukrainian author


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