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The Naga's Journey is set in modern-day Bangkok, a city that is degenerating rapidly, both morally, in its acceptance of a flourishing sex trade, and physically, under constant threat of a flood of such great magnitude that its potential for...

Bhasa is one of the most celebrated Indian playwrights writing in Sanskrit, an ancient language used for the majority of early Hindu and Buddhist spiritual and philosophical texts. Although the precise dates of his life and work are not known,...

A graphic novel by cartoonist David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp (2009) tells the story of the eponymous Asterios Polyp, a professor from Cornell University in New York. After a sudden lightning strike destroys his apartment, Polyp takes up...

Director Rachel Lears began to work on the film that became Knock Down the House the day after Donald J. Trump won the office of the President of the United States. The film follows four Democratic candidates: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New...

The White Helmets is a short documentary film released in 2016, following the daily lives of the Syrian Civil Defence, who are nicknamed the White Helmets. Each of these men is a volunteer who becomes part of a team that focuses on medical...

Satellites is a play by critically acclaimed playwright Diana Son. Commissioned by the Public Theater, it was presented in the 2004 “New Work Now!” which recognized works from emerging or established playwrights. The play opened on June 18, 2006....

The 2000 Japanese dystopian thriller Battle Royale was based on the novel of the same name that was written in 1999 by Japanese journalist Koushun Takami. It follows the story of a group of junior high schoolers who live in a Japan governed by a...

Directed by Hassan Fazili, Midnight Traveler is, at its core, a documentary about refugees -- most prominently about the films director, Hassan Fazili. After the terrorist group The Taliban puts a bounty out on Fazili and his family's head, they...

Written as a series of periodical essays from 1867 to 1868 and published in Cornhill Magazine, Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy was collected as a book in 1869. In the book, Arnold examines Victorian culture in England. He questions how...

There are only three characters in The Drawer Boy, a two-act play by Michael Healey. It is set in Clinton, Ontario, in 1972; the village is a small community that was founded in 1831 close to Lake Huron. The play's plot centers around the owners...

In The House at Sugar Beach (2008), author Helene Cooper takes a look at the troubled and violent past of Liberia, the country which she hails from. Particularly, she examines the effects of the 1980 military coup d'état had on her country. Partly...

This collection of short stories by Peter Carey is set in a post-Marxist utopia in which obesity is frowned upon and considered counterrevolutionary. Titled The Fat Man in History (1993), Carey asks a number of important questions relevant to the...

Totaling 272 pages, "Foreign Soil" and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction. Set all across the world -- from Africa, to London, to the United States, to the West Indies, to Australia -- this collection gives a voice to those without one...

In 1839, the first collection of poems by W. B. Yeats was published, taking its name from the last epic-style poem that Yeats ever wrote. The collection also included a number of poems that would be republished as one longer poem that Yeats...

Sherman Alexie's memoir You Don't Have to Say You Love Me is a mournful, harrowing book written after the death of his mother at the age of 78, with whom he had a complicated but loving relationship. Through 78 poems, 78 essays, and countless...

There are lots of ways in which a first-time novelist can attain prominence. They can make it to the top of the New York Times bestseller list; they can receive rave reviews from literary critics, or, like American author David Wroblewski, they...

Indian author Prajwal Parajuly is particularly well-known for his writings about Nepali speaking people and their culture. The Ghurkha's Daughter is a collection of short stories that dramatize the experiences of the Nepalese people both living in...

Indian-American author Karan Mahajan's second novel, The Association of Small Bombs, opens with a narrative about the detonation of a bomb in a New Delhi marketplace in 1996, by one of the protagonists, Shockie, a man from Kashmir. The bomb kills...

If given the opportunity to name the top ten most important -- yet controversial -- books, Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) would invariably appear on any given list. At its core, Orientalism is a study of, as the title suggests, orientalism. In...

Of the various books that Phillip K. Dick published over the course of his long and illustrious career, 1957's Eye in the Sky is among his lesser-known works. It tells the story of Jack Hamilton, the primary character in the book, and seven other...

At its core, C.S. Lewis' is an allegory. It tells the story of a bus ride from hell to heaven. In the book, Lewis meditates on a number of topics, including: Christianity, good and evil, the Bible, judgment, damnation, and, naturally, heaven and...

Whale Rider, the 2002 film directed by Niki Caro and starring Keisha Castle-Hughes, tells the story of Castle-Hughes' Kahu Paikea Apirana, a twelve year old Maori girl with a big heart -- and even bigger dreams. Ultimately, she wants to become the...

At Makerere University College in 1960, while being in his second preliminary year, Ngugi wa Thiong'o approached Jonathan Kariara, who was in his final year as a student of English and involved in a university journal called Penpoint. Ngugi wa...

Adapted from the critically-acclaimed Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, No Country for Old Men (released in 2007), tells the story of a man named Llewyn Moss, who one day stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong and nearly $2,000,000 in cash....