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In the early 1990s, women were feeling pressure like never before, specifically, pressure to do what was loosely termed (mostly by male journalists) as "have it all". In fact, a book called Having It All was published during the same year that The...

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's In the First Circle (first published in the West in 1968 and in the USSR in 1990), tells the story of Gleb Nerzhin, a man who is a brilliant mathematician but also a prisoner. Set during three days in Moscow, In the First...

In his political allegory Animal Farm, George Orwell wrote that "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." This observation sums up the Cultural Revolution in China that took place in the 1960s; Communist dictator Mao Tse Tung,...

Published in 2010, The Hairdresser of Harare is a fictional book by Zimbabwean author Tendai Huchu. The book focuses on how Zimbabwe is in the present day, rapidly changing and expanding based upon influential western ideas. All of the book is...

An aubade is a poem traditionally set at dawn or early morning, and typically about parting lovers. This “Aubade” doesn’t involve love, however, despite its fitting setting. In the poem, which uses an ABABCCDEED rhyme scheme, the speaker wakes up...

The genesis of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is both incredibly unique and exceptionally fascinating. Written -- or perhaps more appropriately, dictated -- by French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby after suffering a massive stroke which left...

Call Me by Your Name is a 2017 coming-of-age romance film directed by Luca Guadagnino and based on the book of the same name by André Aciman. It stars Timothée Chalamet as Elio and Armie Hammer as Oliver, two young men who find themselves...

"Cat Person" is a short story published in The New Yorker in December 2017, which quickly went viral, attaining significant praise on the internet, especially within certain feminist circles.

The story is told from the point of view of Margot, a...

The Aftermath is a novel written by Welsh author Rhidian Brook and published in 2013. The book is set in Hamburg, Germany in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The story centers around a British colonel, Lewis Morgan, who is tasked with...

The Elephant Vanishes is a collection of 17 short stories, the title being the title of the last story by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The stories were written between 1980 and 1991, and published in Japan in various magazines, then...

In the 1960s, the new age of technology seemed to create a level of paranoia amongst the population that led to a generalized fear of apocalypse; it is this post-apocalyptic future that British author J.G. Ballard sets his 1962 novel The Drowned...

Down and Out in Paris and London is a memoir by famous English writer George Orwell. The memoir, although considered fictional by some critics, is actually completely true. Although the events that occur in the story did not happen to the same...

Released in 2003, Lost in Translation is a multinational film directed by Sofia Coppola. The film, which is a romantic comedy, has received many positive reviews, and stars acclaimed actor Bill Murray and renowned actress Scarlett Johansson....

The Demon Lover is a 2011 erotic fantasy novel by Juliet Dark, a pseudonym ("pen name") of award-winning American author Carol Goodman. The novel is the first installment of the Fairwick Trilogy, which centers on protagonist Callie McFay, a...

Among the Hidden is a young adult novel published in 1998. The book depicts a dystopian society in the not-too-distant future in which it is illegal for families to have more than two children. Illegal third children, like Luke Gardner, must spend...

“i carry your heart with me(i carry it in” by E. E. Cummings first appeared in the June 1952 issue of Poetry, and was published later in the collection Complete Poems: 1904–1962. It is not only a widely read love poem, but also a piece that...

Fresh off the success of 2000's Memento, Christopher Nolan was hired by Warner Bros in 2003 to reboot the Batman property. The result was 2005's Batman Begins, which he cowrote with David S. Goyer and which starred Christian Bale as Bruce...

Rocket Boys is a bestselling memoir by Homer Hickam published in 1998. It was made into a movie the year titled October Sky (an anagram of Rocket Boys) in the year following its publication, and the memoir was subsequently re-published under the...

The Return of Martin Geurre has roots in both fiction and non-fiction. The book, written in 1983 by Canadian and American author Natalie Zemon Davis, centers around the 16th century legendary story of Martin Geurre. Geurre, who had a wooden leg,...

How do you follow up a debut novel that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction? The answer is, you don't - at least, not with another novel. University of Southern California professor, and multiple award winning author, Viet Thanh Nguyen...

A young adult fantasy novel, Red Queen was published in 2015 and written by American author Victoria Aveyard. In the novel, there are different types of people - Reds and Silvers among them. The Silvers have special blood that gives them special...

"The Red Convertible" is a short story by American author Louise Erdrich. The story and its characters draw heavily on the author's own partial Native American background: Erdrich is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa...

It is one thing to receive universal critical acclaim and commercial success with your debut novel, and quite another thing entirely to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for it; this extraordinary experience graced University of Southern...

Swallow the Air is the 2006 debut novel by Australian author Tara June Winch. It draws on Winch's own mixed ethnic background: while she is of partial European English descent, her father is a member of the Wiradjuri aboriginal nation of New South...