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The Vine Leaf was written by Maria Cristina Mena, a widely recognized Latina figure in US literature. Mena was born in Mexico City, went to an English boarding school, learned Spanish, English, French, and Italian, and moved to New York when she...

To a God Unknown is a novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1933. To a God Unknown is Steinbeck’s third novel, but he found that this novel was one of the most difficult ones to write. It took him over five years to finish it, making it...

Graduation Day was published in 2013 and aims at questioning authority subtly through its characters. It is a work of fiction that describes a terrible place full of deprivation and terror. In such a place, this book gives space to characters like...

Independent Study (2014) is the second novel in Joelle Charbonneau's The Testing trilogy. It resumes the story of the protagonist, Cia, where the first novel left off: at the start of Independent Study, "Cia is a freshman at the University in Tosu...

As an African-American writer active in New York in the 1920s, Jean Toomer has often been considered a figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Toomer, however, disavowed the connection believing that it placed his race before his work as a poet. Toomer...

The film’s original title was Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine, but eventually became Starship Troopers when the producers and screenwriter found the novel of the same title by Robert A. Heinlein. Feeling that it was a better title, they licensed the book...

The Fifth Element is a fantastic action film with the elements of comedy directed by Luc Besson. It has been shot in 1996 at the “Gaumont” studio in France, and released in 1997. The budget of the film encounters 90 million dollars, and at that...

Published in 2003, Oryx and Crake is a post-apocalyptic novel set in an unspecified future. The book is written in the same style as many of Margaret Atwood's novels, that of speculative fiction. Although the book reads as if it is telling a...

Ambiguous Adventure, originally titled L'Aventure ambiguë, is a novel by Senegalese author Cheikh Hamidou Kane. It was originally published in 1961 in the author's native language.

The novel is about the interaction between the cultures of Africa...

Beasts of No Nation was written by Uzodinma Iweala as part of his undergraduate thesis at Harvard University. His story of Agu, a young African boy forced to become a soldier, was met with great praise and acclaim when officially published in...

Women on the Market is a chapter in a philosophy book published by the French philosopher Luce Irigary. The chapter appears in the volume The sex which is not one and is generally considered as being an essay than can be studied on its own. The...

Jean Anouilh updates the context of the classic Greek drama by Sophocles to make it resonate with the era in which it was written: during the occupation of France by Nazi Germany during World War II. As a result, Antigone can be interpreted as a...

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner is one of Scotland’s most famous literary works, characterized by a macabre sensibility, postmodern narrative structure, and a beguiling blend of religious fanaticism, the gothic, political...

Holes is Louis Sachar's fifth novel, and probably his most loved. The novel took Sachar a year and a half to write, and was published in 1998. Holes combined huge popular appeal with critical success, as Holes won or was nominated for almost...

“The Man Who Lived Underground” began life not as a short story, but as a novel. Author Richard Wright ran into trouble finding a publisher who could get terribly excited about a novel-length story of a man who lives in the subterranean world of...

Ta-Nehisi Coates is an American author born on September 30, 1975 in Baltimore, Maryland. After graduating from Woodlawn High School, he attended Howard University, but dropped out in order to pursue a career in journalism. Coates worked at...

Hadji Murat is a relatively short novel written by Leo Tolstoy. This novel was published in 1912, after his death; Tolstoy's narrative falls under the category of historical fiction.

The novel pivots around a war in which a brave chieftain, Hadji...

Raising Ourselves: A Gwich'in Coming of Age Story from the Yukon River is an account written by Velma Wallis that was published in 2002. Wallis is one of the best-selling Native American writers of the modern days. She is of Gwich'in Athabascan...

"Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" is a collection of humorous stories of English writer Jerome K. Jerome, published in 1886. This book was the second book published by the author. It helped him to become a leading British writer-humorist. "Idle...

There Was a Country was written by Chinua Achebe, one of Nigeria’s most famous authors. It was published in 2012, after Achebe had remained in silence on the events of the Nigerian Civil War for over forty years. There Was a Country is an account...

Adeline Yen Mah had a traumatic upbringing. As a child, she was raised by her cruel stepmother, abused and neglected. Later, when her father died, this same stepmother kept Adeline from reading his will until two years after his death, at which...

Along the River is a novel that was written by a famous Chinese American writer called Adeline Yen Mah. It was published in early 2009 by Penguin Publishing in hardcover format, and on April 10, 2012, in paperback. The book is part of her Chinese...

The book "Cured" by Bethany Wiggins is the sequel to the original book "Stung". The series revolves around the mass biohazard pandemic happening in the world because of the extinction of the bee population. "Cure", published in March 2014, is a...

Stung is a novel published recently in 2013 and written by Bethany Wiggins. Wiggins is the author of Stung, Shifting, and Cured. This particular novel is exciting and adventurous, telling a fictional, post-apocalyptic story of a girl named Fiona.