4.39 avg rating — 37,535 ratings

"The quintessential trunk manuscript. Unpublished not for political reasons but because of its author's perfectionism. Also virtually unpublishable - a mass of fragments written on napkins and loose papers which was not edited into a coherent whole until 50 years after his death. Despite being virtually unknown in his lifetime, Pessoa is now a national hero in Portugal."

4.29 avg rating — 1,464 ratings

"Bending the rules a bit as some (very few) of these poems were published in Pessoa's lifetime. Still, this shows perfectly what can be achieved by the writer who doesn't give a f**k. Again, very likely unpublishable at the time."

3.91 avg rating — 1,283 ratings

"Sad sad story of a stubborn guy who wanted to write surreal nonsense under the Communist dictatorship no matter the consequences. But at least he was given the privilege of having these manuscripts (never submitted to a publisher) stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts after his death."

3.91 avg rating — 75,262 ratings

"Slightly cheating, as we all know Kafka wasn't as unknown as the publicists make out. Still, what were the chances he was ever going to finish this beast, let alone publish it? Unfinishable by its very nature, this is the Granddaddy of lost-modernist masterpieces - the one that convinced Penguin it was worth tracking down the others."

4.02 avg rating — 767 ratings

"Unfortunately for our list much of Walser's output was published during his lifetime, despite that he ended up in an asylum, as much to have a roof over his head as because he was crazy, this correspondent can't help thinking. The most far-out of his always idiosyncratic works was this one, handwritten in his own private 'microscript', thought to be indecipherable until decades after his death."