Published in 1942, Ismat Chughtai's Urdu short story "The Quilt" ("Lihaaf") is about a young girl who is molested by her mother's adopted sister, Begum Jaan. Narrated from the perspective of the unnamed young girl, the story first focuses on Begum...

"Refugee Blues," published in 1939 by the American-English writer W.H. Auden, is a blues poem describing the experiences and struggles of a German-Jewish refugee from Nazism. The poem was published on the eve of Britain's entry into World War II,...

“Facing It” is a poem by Yusef Komunyakaa about visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC.

Komunyakaa was deployed in Vietnam from 1969-1970 as a war correspondent for the military newspaper The Southern Cross, and witnessed the war’...

Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" is a part-autobiographical poem reflecting on the losses that the poet encountered throughout her lifetime. The nineteen-line poem is written in villanelle form and is divided into six stanzas. The poet considers the...

Published in 1914, Saki's "The Lumber Room" is a comedic short story about Nicholas, a mischievous upper-class English boy who uses his cleverness and imagination to subvert his aunt's authority.

After putting a frog in his breakfast, Nicholas has...

Sing, Unburied, Sing is a 2017 novel by Jesmyn Ward. The story follows a biracial family living in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. There are three narrators that relate the story's events in alternating chapters. The narrators are...

Frogs, or The Frogs, is one of Aristophanes's greatest comedies and is justly celebrated for its wit and keen commentary on Athenian politics and society. It is the last surviving work of Old Comedy and is thus also notable for its heralding a...

Published in 1939, Sinclair Ross's "The Painted Door" is a short story about Ann, a farmer's wife who has an affair while her husband is away during a fierce winter storm. Feeling an increasing sense of isolation, alienation, and resentment, Ann...

Conjectures and Refutations by Karl Popper is based on his understanding of philosophy and reflection of thoughts. Popper applies his understanding of politics, science, and history to argue how people’s insights and objectives develop through a...

Published in 2003, Jerry Spinelli's Loser is a children's novel about a boy who struggles to fit in with his peers due to his clumsiness, poor grades, and lack of self-awareness. Nicknamed "Loser" after failing to win a team race, Donald Zinkoff...

Christopher Paolini blossomed in the already fertile world of fantasy fiction in 2003 with his novel Eragon. That book would kick off what would come to be known as The Inheritance Cycle which, as of 2021, stood at four novels in total. In 2020,...

Ruin and Rising is a fantasy action book written by Leigh Bardugo, and was first published by Macmillan on June 17, 2014. The book is the third and final installment in the Grisha trilogy and was preceded by Siege and Storm.

The book follows the...

Published in the summer of 2013, Siege and Storm is the Leigh Bardugo’s follow-up to Shadow and Bone and the middle bridge of the trilogy linking the novel to its sequel, Ruin and Rising. The Grisha Trilogy established Bardugo as a new force to be...

“Shadow and Bone” is the first book in the Grisha Trilogy, a fantasy series set in a fictional universe that brings science and magic into connection. The novel follows the main protagonist Alina as she accidentally discovers that she holds more...

Xala is a novel by Senegalese author Ousmane Sembène, originally written in French in 1973. The following year, it was made into an award-winning movie by Sembène himself, and it was translated into English as part of the influential Heinemann...

Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Matthew Warchus, Pride (released in 2014) tells the true story of Mark Ashton and a group of lesbian and gay activists who started a group to raise money for British miners who were affected by the British Miners'...