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In her collection of feminist poems entitled The Octopus Museum, author Brenda Shaugnessy discusses complex and relevant themes through the lens of a dystopian future in which octopuses reign supreme. Humans, on the other hand, are no longer the...

American author Anthony Marra's collection of short stories entitled The Tsar of Love and Techno (2015) tells the stories of a wide array of diverse characters - all of whom live in Russia in times periods ranging from 1937 to the Present Day....

Dennis Johnson's novel, Tree of Smoke, is set in Vietnam during the years between 1963 and 1970. The book centers around its protagonist, Skip Sands, who joins the C.I.A. and is posted to Vietnam, where he works for his uncle, Colonel Francis X....

Written by American author Denis Johnson, The Name of the World (2001) tells the story of a man named Michael Reed, a man who is haunted by the death of his wife and child. After their life, he has spent his life in an incredibly numb state and...

Irmgard Keun's novel, After Midnight, takes place in a Germany that is already darkened under the shadow of Adolf Hitler, but not yet as dark as it will become as war approaches. Because of this, many of the characters in the book are on a...

Logan (2017) is Hugh Jackman's final outing in the role of Wolverine - it is truly his swansong. Taking inspiration from the "Old Man Logan" comic book series, the film follows an aging - and dying - Wolverine, who is trying to earn enough money...

Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) is a documentary like any other. Covering the British front of WWI, audiences experience the war through the eyes - and ears - of those who experienced it firsthand. To tell the stories of those who...

Written by prolific Australian playwright Alex Buzo, Norm and Ahmed (1968) was the subject of a tremendous amount of controversy when it was released. Originally, the play ended with the line "f*cking boong," an ethnic slur. The actor who used...

Directed and written by Rian Johnson (best known for Looper and Star Wars: The Last Jedi), Knives Out (2019) is a mystery following Ana De Armas’ Marta, a nurse who is tasked with caring for and accompanying Christopher Plummer’s Harlan, a mystery...

Written by the prolific English playwright George Lillo, The London Merchant (first performed in 1731) tells the darkly tragic story of the downfall of a young man because he has associated himself with a prostitute named Sarah Millwood. Lillo's...

Poet Juan Felipe Herrera has been publishing poetry for almost four decades, and most of his body of work is represented in his poem Half the World in Light. Like all of his previous poems, its central theme is the Chicano experience in the United...

In her memoir entitled Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots (released in 2012), author Deborah Feldman discusses her early life in an incredibly religious Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York. She chronicles not only her life...

The Winter of Our Discontent was published in 1961 by John Steinbeck and was the last novel he wrote. The novel gets its title from Richard III, a play written by William Shakespeare:

"Now is the winter of our discontentMade glorious summer by...

Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not for Burning is a play about a man named Thomas Mendip. Thomas is a discharged soldier who wants to commit suicide but ultimately doesn't. Later on, Thomas meets with the mayor and is about to hang himself but,...

Robert Cormier's Eight Plus One: Stories is about a seventeen-year-old boy named Mike who goes to visit his grandmother's house. Mike's grandmother is about to die, the grandmother invites him so she can tell him the family secrets. Some secrets...

The Last Lunar Baedeker is a collection of poetry, satires, manifestos, feminist tracts, experimental plays, and autobiographical profiles by English author Mina Loy. Much of Loy's work talks about things like feminism, God and religion, and...

Written by Canadian author Esi Edugyan, Washington Black tells the story of a young man named George Washington "Wash" Black, who endeavors to escape the bonds of slavery in the Barbados. The book follows Black's escape, as well as what he does...

Carlos Fuentes' The Old Gringo is about a man named Ambrose Bierce. He is an American writer, soldier, and journalist. It tells the story about some of his days in Mexico around Pancho Villa's soldiers. It mostly talks about his encounter with...

Esteban Echeverria was born in 1805 and died in 1851. Though he lived a rather short life, his contributions to literary process can hardly be overestimated, as Echeverria’s works are considered the first of Argentinian prose fiction.

Echeverria...

Written by author Martin L. Shoemaker, Today I Am Carey (published in 2009) tells the story of a person who is loses her memory and needs an android named Carey to help her have a normal life - and fill in all of the things that she can no longer...

Although best-known for his poems (including classics like "Do not go gentle into that good night"), Welshman Dylan Thomas wrote a number of unproduced screenplays and plays during his long and illustrious career. Among those plays is The Doctor...

It is almost impossible to hear the name Chernobyl and think of anything other than the catastrophic nuclear disaster that took place there in 1986. Chernobyl is many things - including the birthplace of tennis megastar Maria Sharapova - but it...

Written by Unca Eliza Winkfield (likely a pseudonym; the real of name of the author is still not known), The Female American (originally published in 1767) tells the story of a half-Native American, half-English woman who is marooned on an island...

If one were instructed to construct a list of the five most famous playwrights, Irish writer Samuel Beckett would almost certainly be included in most of those lists. His most famous works were written between World War II and the decade of 1960....