Letter: World literature

Sir: I'm a bit puzzled by the letters from Eric Dickens (29 June) and David Wardrop (1 July) lamenting the supposed insularity of British literary tastes.

I've just trawled through my modest library and found the following authors in translation, and they are all readily available, even at our little local bookstore, where I bought them all: Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Leonardo Sciascia, Yashar Kemal, Ismail Kadare, Abel Posse, Camilo Jose Cela, Leonid Borodin, Naquib Mahfouz, Hugo Claus, Primo Levi, Georges Perec, Milan Kundera ... I could go on and on.

You can easily read many of their works in English translation. We are not as insular as many people keep hoping to declare us.

JIM KELTZ

London N10