Newest Study Guides
Each study guide includes essays, an in-depth chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quiz. Study guides are available in PDF format.
Each study guide includes essays, an in-depth chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quiz. Study guides are available in PDF format.
For Today I Am a Boy is the first novel by Canadian author Kim Fu. Its title is derived from a song of the same name by Anthony & The Johnsons. It tells the story of Peter Huang, a first-generation Canadian born to Chinese immigrant parents....
Twelfth Night was directed by Paul Kafno for television while Kenneth Branagh directed to stage production. Based upon William Shakespeare's play it was produced by the Renaissance Theatre Company and distributed by ITV-Independent Television. The...
Anthony Trollope is far more widely known for his novels. He remains one of the most prolific novelists of all time. Before establishing that reputation, however, Trollope had already earned himself a name for publishing short tales of family...
The Way to Rainy Mountain is a historical fiction novel by American author Navarre Scott Momaday. The book follows the path of a nomadic group of Native Americans known as the Kiowa, a tribe with which Momaday's ancestors were associated. The...
How I Became a Nun is a novel by Cesar Aira. Published in 2007, the book takes place in Argentina and chronicles the story of a young child named César who refers to herself as a girl but is seen by the rest of the world as a boy.
The plot of How...
Zafer Senocak is a Turkish writer born on May 25, 1961 in Ankara, Turkey. When Senocak was nine years old, his family moved to Munich, Germany, where he attended high school and later studied political science at university. Before he delved into...
A Frenchman, a philosopher, and a literary analyst, Jean-Francois Lyotard lived from 1924 until 1998, and his legacy is still felt every time someone says "Postmodernism," since it was Lyotard who brought the term out from Art Theory and into...
Ruth Fainlight was born in the United States in the year 1931, but now lives in the United Kingdom. Still alive and active today, she is a poet, translator, and writer of fiction. For a time, she also lived in Spain and France, helping with her...
Raymond Carver was an American short story and poem writer born in 1938. He was born in a small town in Oregon, which may have inspired why much of his work has to do with realism and minimalism. He started looking into writing, however, when he...
The Age of Reason was published in two parts by Thomas Paine, the first in 1794 and the follow-up in 1796. Part of the reason for The Age of Reason existing in two separate parts is the reception the original publication received. Essentially, the...
Seabiscuit is an equestrian movie directed by Gary Ross, based on the best-selling book of the same name by Lauren Hillenbrand, who also wrote the non-fiction bestseller Unbroken. It tells the story of an unlikely American hero, Seabiscuit, whose...
Pity the Beautiful is a collection of poems by American poet Dana Gioia. Gioia is a noted figure in the poetry world, serving as the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003-2009. The book was published in 2012 to critical praise....
Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-73) one of the most important poets of the twentieth century. He was born in York, Auden spent much time of his childhood in Birmingham but was educated at Gresham's school Norfolk, a public school with liberal ideas about...
African Religions and Philosophy is by John Mbiti. It was published in 1970. John Mbiti was a professor, and this book is an extended translation of his lectures. This book applied in many fields, including not only African religion and philosophy...
Between the years 1602 and 1604, the Viscountess Falkland, Elizabeth Cary, wrote the Senecan revenge tragedy, "The Tragedy of Mariam", though it was not published until almost a decade later, in 1613. The play is considered groundbreaking; it is...
Katherine Mansfield is known for her short poems, many of them composed in the early twentieth century. Some of her best known poems include, "Voices of the Air", "Countrywomen", and "A Few Rules For Beginners", all of which are under five stanzas...
The Gods Are Athirst, also known as The Gods Will Have Blood, is a fictional story by French author Anatole France. The book is set during the French Revolution, and was published in 1912. The story follows the main character Évariste Gamelin, who...
The Map of Love is a historical fiction novel written by Ahdaf Soueif. The novel was first published in 1999. Ahdaf Soueif is an Egyptian writer who earned a PhD in literature in England. Her books are known to reflect historical events.
For its...
Mother! was written and directed by filmmaker Darren Aronofsky. It was produced by Scott Franklin, Ari Handel, and Aronofsky himself and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film was made for an estimated budget of $33,000,000 and grossed...
It took Anita Amirrezvani five years to complete the first draft of her debut novel The Blood of Flowers. To capture the essence of the world, she traveled twice to Isfahan, the city where the story takes place. She spent countless hours...
Male Daughters, Female Husbands is a 1987 book by Ifi Amadiume. Critically acclaimed, it explores gender roles in Africa and poses that before European influence in colonization, African society was largely egalitarian in terms of sex.
In Male...
Pnin was first released in an episodic series in the New Yorker in 1954. Written by Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita), this novel is by an author known more for creepy pedophilia in his plot lines, not comedy or satire. Yet Pnin is filled with intelligent...
Philip Levine was born in 1928 in Detroit, Michigan; a city which would go on to attain a level of immortality by virtue of so many of the poet’s verse being set there. He would go on to earn an M.A. from Wayne State University in 1954 to which he...
The Way of All Flesh is a Victorian novel written in the ten year period between 1873 and 1884 by Samuel Butler. It was finally published in 1903. It is widely accepted to be semi-autobiographical. The book doggedly brings to light and attacks...