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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....

Although the majority of the plot takes place in Edinburgh, Scotland, Kate Atkinson's third novel to feature retired police detective Jackson Brodie actually begins in Devon, in the south east of England, where a six year old girl, Joanna,...

Water by the Spoonful is a play written by playwright, poet and essayist Quiara Alegría Hudes. Hudes also wrote a book for the musical In the Heights. The play premiered on October 20, 2011 at Hartford Stage in Connecticut. It is played in English...

Released in September 2019, Red at the Bone tells the story of a young woman named Melody, a sixteen year old who is celebrating her birthday in her grandparents house in Brooklyn, New York. Although it tells the story of Melody's family history,...

Castle Rackrent is unusual among Maria Rackrent's works in that it is one of the few novels she wrote that was not edited by her father. Published in 1800, it is a short novel / novella that tells the story of four heirs to the Rackrent fortune as...

Elizabeth Strout first wrote about her protagonist, Olive Kitteridge, in her 2008 novel bearing her heroine's name; this sequel follows a similar format, and consist of thirteen short stories set on the coast of Maine, that do not follow on from...

Directly translated from its original language, the title of text is literally one with the skin of a tiger; this Medieval epic poem was penned by Georgia's national poet Shota Rustaveli in the twelfth century. It is divided into Rustavelian...

C.S. Lewis, one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century, is considered by many to be one of history's greatest apologists (logical defenders of the Christian faith). Out of many nonfiction works, The Problem of Pain stands out as one of...

Although he died destitute, Philip K. Dick is responsible for some of the most inventive -- and iconic -- science fiction stories of all time. Among such stories include Blade Runner, The Man in the High Castle, Minority Report, and A Scanner...

"On Fairy-Stories" is a critical essay by J.R.R. Tolkien, the acclaimed author of The Lord of the Rings. The essay was published in its final form in the collection Essays Presented to Charles Williams from Oxford University Press in 1947, but the...

When it was released in 1999, The Freedom Writers Diary was met with critical acclaim and financial success -- but it was not released without controversy. In 2008, a teacher was suspended for a year and a half without pay for teaching the book...