Nominate your best authors by language

[Archaea]

English: Shakespeare, bar none. Although Milton was darn good, as was Chaucer.

King Lear or Henry the Eighth.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, the best short story of all time.

French: Victo Hugo, Les Mis, nothing even close.

German: Goethe, Schilling or Lessing. Faust or Nathan the Wise.

Chinese: don't read it well enough to opine though there are many classics.

Japanese: same as above.

Russian: Doystoyevski, or Tolstoi. I liked Anna Karenina or Brothers Karamosov.

Spanish: not certain, still deciding. Cervantes, but a long read.

Italian: oh geeze, the levels of heaven and hell, his name, or crimeny.