Louise Erdrich's novel The Night Watchman is not just close to her heart because she wrote it; it tells the story of her Native American ancestors who, in the early 1950s, fought against a congressional bill that, in an Orwellian turn of phrase,...

Nadine Gordimer once again tackled the issue of apartheid in South Africa through metaphor and symbolism in her short story “Once Upon a Time.” First published in a shorter version in 1988 in the Weekly Mail, the standard full-length tale appeared...

"The Good-Morrow" is a 1633 poem by English poet John Donne. The poem was originally published in his collection Songs and Sonnets, and Donne himself considered it a sonnet, despite the fact that it doesn’t conform to the standard number of lines,...

Set during South African apartheid, The Island is a play that Athol Fugard co-wrote with two writers and actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, both Black South Africans. The three men met when they were members of a drama group called the Serpent...

"Should Wizard Hit Mommy?" is a short story by American writer John Updike, about a man telling his daughter a bedtime story, and in the process revealing the dynamics of their own family life. First published in The New Yorker on June 13th, 1959,...

Stephen Frears's film The Queen, released in 2006, broadly tells the story of Princess Diana's tragic death and the response (or lack thereof) of the royal family in the days following her death. Particularly, the film centers on Queen Elizabeth...

Produced for the first time at Griffin Theatre Company in 1986, Away is the best known of Michael Gow's plays, both within Australia and around the world. Gow had just turned 30 before the play was written, and in writing it, Gow has said that he...

Gary Soto's poem "Oranges" first appeared in his fifth collection of poetry, Black Hair, in 1985. The poem appeared a few years later in a collection of poetry geared towards young writers, A Fire in My Hands, in 1991. This collection of poetry...

Artemis Fowl is a young-adult fantasy novel about a twelve-year-old criminal mastermind from Dublin. Unlike most main characters in young-adult novels, Artemis is an antihero instead of the hero of the series. He is a deviant mastermind whose...

Scarborough is a novel by Catherine Hernandez released in 2017 by Arsenal Pulp Press, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Scarborough was named co-winner of the 2015 Asian-Canadian Writers Workshop Emerging Writers Award for fiction. It was...

Alphonse Daudet's 1873 short story "The Last Lesson" is about Franz, an Alsatian schoolboy who arrives late to school one morning to learn that Germany, having annexed the Alsace and Lorraine regions of France, has decreed the French language will...

Arguably the most popular of Saki’s short stories, “The Open Window” first appeared in Beasts and Super Beasts, a collection of short stories published in 1914 just before Munro went to fight in World War I. “The Open Window” is appreciated most...

Katherine Mansfield's 1922 short story "The Doll's House" is about the daughters of the wealthy Burnell family receiving an elaborate doll's house which the girls show off to children at school. The Burnell girls' mother forbids them from inviting...

Roald Dahl's 1949 short story "The Sound Machine" is about Klausner, an obsessive man who invents a machine that allows him to hear high-pitched sounds otherwise inaudible to the human ear. While testing his sound machine, Klausner discovers that...

Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1938 novel Nausea follows Antoine Roquentin, a historian suffering under a strange affliction he calls “The Nausea.” As the novel unfolds, Antoine’s Nausea worsens. Slowly, his philosophical diaries expand on his condition,...

Swami and Friends is an Indian book written in English published in 1935. The work was the first novel ever published by the famous Indian author R. K. Narayan. Narayan's friend, Graham Greene, recommended his manuscript to a publisher, and it was...

Heart of a Dog is one of the best examples of Bulgakov's criticisms of life in the Soviet Union. Written when Bulgakov was 33 years old, it was first introduced to the public in March 1925 in a Moscow apartment with a gathering of approximately 50...

First published in 1680, “The Disappointment” is a poem about an unfortunate sexual encounter between Lisander and Cloris, a shepherd and shepherdess in the countryside. When Lisander is unable to maintain an erection, Cloris runs away in...