Here are a variety of international Vidal books, including some of the author's earliest European covers. Vidal's second novel, In a Yellow Wood (1947), was his first to be translated - into Norwegian (left) as "My Life Is My Own," and into Danish (right) as "A Night in New York." The Danish title captures a sense of the novel's plot, but the Norwegian title draws upon the central struggle of its protagonist, Robert Holton. The Norwegian edition, the first translation of Vidal anywhere in the world, calls the book "My Life Is My Own." The 1951 French edition of The Season of Comfort (above) is one of only translations of that book anywhere in the world. The book was translated into Arabic in 2005. Vidal's short story collection A Thirsty Evil have been translated into only three languages, among them Portuguese (in Brazil) and Finnish (although only three of the seven stories appear in the abbreviated Finnish edition). In Brazil, it was retitled A Moment of Green Laurel after one of the collection's best tale. The collection in Finnish was retitled The Ladies in the Library and Other Stories, after another tale in the book.

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FEATURED PAGE: A slide show of covers from various early works by Vidal

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Vidal's little novel A Search for the King (1950) retained its English title in most translations. Pictured below are Italian, Estonian, Spanish and Icelandic editions of the book. And why would a publisher in Iceland - where almost every adult in a country of only 260,000 people speaks fluent English - want to issue a translation of Vidal's small, relatively unknown 1950 novel A Search for the King? The book's publisher says a translator friend of his had long enjoyed Vidal's work, and A Search for the King was one of his favorites. So the publisher agreed to a translation. The Icelandic title, by the way, means "I will follow you anywhere."

Italy, 1951	Estonia, 1994	Spain, 1984	Iceland, 1995	Netherlands, 1970