The Vivisector, published in 1970, is Patrick White's eighth and longest novel. White dedicated the novel to the painter Sidney Nolan but denied that the main character, Hurtle Duffield, was based on him. The novel is often considered a largely...

Dennis Kelly's DNA is a play about a group of teenagers conspiring to cover up the death of a peer who falls into a ventilation shaft while being bullied by the group. It was first performed in 2008 in London.

Comprising four long scenes and...

Judith Wright was an important Australian poet, critic, and environmentalist who entwined her artistry with her activism. "Train Journey," published in the 1953 collection The Gateway, is about the relationship between the speaker and the country...

Set in Tobago and first staged in 1978, Derek Walcott's play Pantomime is a two-act comedy about an English hotelier who proposes to his Trinidadian employee that they act together in a race-reversed satire of Robinson Crusoe.

Operating a rundown...

Judith Wright was an Australian poet and critic known for writing as well as her campaigns for peace, environmental conservation, and Aboriginal land rights. In "Woman to Man," published in the 1949 collection of the same name, a woman ponders the...

Judith Wright was a prominent Australian writer known for her poetry, criticism, and activism. Originally published in the 1966 collection The Other Half, "Eve to Her Daughters" presents the biblical Eve as a speaker addressing her daughters (the...

By the time he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, Harold Pinter was recognized as one of the most widely-performed and influential contemporary playwrights. Born to a Jewish family in the Hackney area of East London in 1930,...

“Poppies” is a poem written by Anglo-Italian poet Jane Weir. It appears in Exit Wounds, a collection commissioned by Carol Ann Duffy in 2009. Weir has described “Poppies” as “a contemporary war poem about war in its various guises.” The poem...

"Island Man" is a poem by esteemed Guyanese-British author Grace Nichols, who was recently awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. “Island Man” was published in her 1984 book The Fat Black Woman’s Poems.

The poem describes a man who awakes...

El Filibusterismo was the second novel written by Filipino writer and nationalist José Rizal. He published the book in 1891 as the sequel to his first novel, Noli Me Tangere or The Social Cancer. El Filibusterismo, known in English as The Reign of...

The Wild Iris is a collection of poems published in 1992 by American poet Louise Glück. Considered to be among the most talented American contemporary poets, Glück is known for her technical mastery, the distinct voices in her poems, and her...

The Echo Maker is a novel by American author Richard Powers. The story revolves around a man named Mark Schluter, who develops a neurological condition after being in a bad car accident.

Set in Nebraska, the novel begins after Mark's accident....

"Afternoon with Irish Cows" first appeared in Billy Collins' fourth poetry collection Picnic, Lightning (1998). Notably, the original cover of the collection depicts an open, gold-colored field with animals grazing, which visually captures the...

The Magic Finger is a children's novel written by British author Roald Dahl. It follows the adventures of a young girl who possesses magical abilities.

An unnamed young girl, the story's narrator, is born on a small farm in the English...

The Prophets (2021) is a work of historical fiction set in the antebellum American Deep South on the Halifax plantation—called Empty by the enslaved men and women who work there day and night. In his debut novel, Robert Jones, Jr. imagines a love...

Langston Hughes’s “Aunt Sue’s Stories” is a free-verse poem about a young black boy who finds comfort in the stories that his Aunt Sue tells him. Aunt Sue’s enchanting voice and somber tone give the child a vivid sense of the life experiences that...

"In the Waiting Room" is a poem by the American poet Elizabeth Bishop, written in 1976. This makes it one of Bishop's later works, written not long before her death in 1979. The poem is written from the point of view of a girl of six, accompanying...

In 1987, a large storm hit England’s southern coast, where the poet Grace Nichols was living. This inspired her to write the poem “Hurricane Hits England,” in which a powerful storm sparks an epiphany for an unnamed speaker. Nichols characterizes...

Published in 1986 in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's native language, Gĩkũyũ, Matigari ma Njiruungi follows the story of a mythologized revolutionary who survives a revolution in an unnamed country. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o wrote Matigari largely in exile in a...