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America is a country which throughout its history has united geographically many nations, cultures, and generations. The problems of national identity have always been urgent in the USA, and not only in the terms of location. Along with these...

Out of This Furnace is technically an historical novel, but it could also be considered a memoir, or a semi-autobiographical fiction, because American novelist Thomas Bell based the plot and the characters on his own family and their experiences...

The Power is a science fiction novel written in 2016 by British writer Naomi Alderman. It is set in a matriarchal society where women have enhanced powers, one of which is the ability to harness jolts of electricity from the tips of their fingers....

Katherine Anne Porter particularly detested the word "novella", considering it an insult, at best. It was akin to calling a shovel a digging implement; Pale Horse, Pale Rider was generally classified by critics and reviewers as a novella, but...

First published in 2017, Korean-American author Min Jin Lee's second novel Pachinko received very solid reviews. Jean Zimmerman of NPR liked the book, saying that "this is honest writing, fiction that looks squarely at what is, both terrible and...

Written by Camron Wright, The Rent Collector (published in 2012) tells the story of a married couple named Ki Lim and Sang Ly. They live in a city full of trash they make a living by finding recycled things and selling them. If it isn't worse...

Manuel Puig was an Argentinian novelist and screenwriter, born as Juan Manuel Puig Delledonne in 1932 near Buenos Aires in Argentina. While still in school, Puig developed an interest in psychoanalysis and European cinema, studying English by...

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, published in 2010 as David Mitchell's fifth novel, is a long, dense historical fiction book that marks a significant departure from his previous genre of writing. Set primarily on the island of Dejima, a...

Annie Dillard is an American writer who writes of growing up in Pittsburgh, PA in her memoir An American Childhood. She won a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction at the age of 29 for her seminal work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. That particular book proved...

When Kobe Bryant tragically died in January of 2020, The Mamba Mentality: How I Play quickly went out of stock and became a #1 bestseller on Amazon. The Mamba Mentality was initially released in October 2018, though, and even then the book sold...

Few books are as innovative or interesting as David Almond's Kit's Wilderness (published in 2000). A children's novel, the book is set in a made-up northeast English town and tells the story of young Kit Watson and his family who move back to the...

Usually, nothing good can come of a family heirloom grandfather clock striking thirteen; Tom Long, though, finds that there is a whole new world that opens up for him when he hears the thirteenth chime. Philippa Pearce's classic children's fantasy...

First published in 1859, George Eliot's short novella The Lifted Veil tells the story of a man who is overcome by haunting visions of the future. An unhappy man, he is overwhelmed by those visions and a tremendous amount of thoughts in his head,...

Born in 1927, Yusuf Idris was an Egyptian writer and playwright. Originally trained to be a doctor, Idris started writing a regular newspaper column while working at a hospital in Cairo. In 1954, his first anthology of short stories was published,...

Judith Clare Thompson, born in 1954, is a Canadian playwright. Initially training and working as an actress, Thompson published her first play in 1980 and afterwards focused solely on her writing career. She has been the recipient of numerous...

Written by acclaimed playwright and journalist Sophie Treadwell, Machinal (released in 1928) was inspired by the real-life case of a woman named Ruth Snyder, who brutally murdered - along with her lover Henry Gray - her husband. Machinal, though,...

There is almost a disconnect between Roxane Gay and her body, hence the use of parentheses in the title. The memoir is the story of her body but it seems to have taken on an identity all of its own, because as far as Gay is concerned, there is...

Dirty Dancing is a romantic dance film produced by Linda Gottlieb and directed by Emile Ardolino. The film was made in 1987 and was distributed by Vestron Pictures. Leading cast members, Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze star as main protagonists...

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is Ottessa Moshfegh’s much-anticipated 2018 follow-up to her debut novel, Eileen. Eileen received rave reviews, won the author a coveted Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

My...

Had the oppressive Soviet regime not cracked down on author Victor Shklovsky and his Russian formalists. the world may have seen more books by the ingenious author. Still, the world was able to read Theory of Prose (originally published in 1929),...

Hamlet is often regarded as the Renaissance narrative which has most aggressively been put to film. Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 entry marks yet another entry into that series of films.

Based on William Shakespeare's play of the same name,...

Ireland has produced some of the best playwrights in the world - Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and Martin McDonagh.

Throughout his long and illustrious career, McDonagh has produced a number of tremendous plays -- and some...

Although not exceptionally well-known, Masahiro Shinoda's film Double Suicide (1969) is one of the most unique films ever to have been produced. Based on a Japanese play called The Love Suicides at Amijima, Double Suicides tells the story of the...

Bodega Dreams tells the story of a young man named Chino who lives in Spanish Harlem. One day he crosses paths with Willie Bodega, who is part man, part legend. He is also a gangster, a community activist and a man with dreams that know no limits....