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Favel Parrett's 2011 novel Past the Shallows is about two brothers, Harry and Miles, who in the wake of their mother's and uncle's deaths must live with their abusive father while repressing memories that threaten to reveal the truth of how their...

Thought to be one of Selma Lagerlöf's earliest works, "The Rat Trap" is a short story that was likely written in the 1880s, before excerpts of Lagerlöf's first novel Gösta Berling's Saga were published in a Swedish weekly publication. The story...

Louise Erdrich's novel The Night Watchman is not just close to her heart because she wrote it; it tells the story of her Native American ancestors who, in the early 1950s, fought against a congressional bill that, in an Orwellian turn of phrase,...

Benjamin Zephaniah is a British Jamaican poet known for his dub poetry and anti-empire stance. Having grown up in Birmingham to an underprivileged neighbourhood of predominantly fellow Jamaicans, Zephaniah struggled a lot, academically, throughout...

Isobel Dixon is a British South African poet, who was acclaimed for her poetry during the early 2000s. Presently, she has permanently relocated to Cambridge, England and often uses the stark contrast between her birth country and the United...

Sujata Bhatt is a well-known poet across India, America, and Europe. Being an Indian-born writer, most of her poems are preoccupied with cultural identity. Bhatt has also written several poems touching the theme of immigration and belonging. This...

Poems and Fancies is a work by Margaret Cavendish, where she explores natural, science, and mathematical philosophy. Cavendish released these poems when politics and war were ravaging most parts of Britain. The poetry reveals a fidgety and...

Louise Erdrich gives the story of Fleur Pillager, a young woman who embarks on a journey to the city to avenge the stealing of her land. Pillager makes her way to the home of James Mauser, the suspected thief. Before leaving for the city, she...

Nadine Gordimer once again tackled the issue of apartheid in South Africa through metaphor and symbolism in her short story “Once Upon a Time.” First published in a shorter version in 1988 in the Weekly Mail, the standard full-length tale appeared...

"The Good-Morrow" is a 1633 poem by English poet John Donne. The poem was originally published in his collection Songs and Sonnets, and Donne himself considered it a sonnet, despite the fact that it doesn’t conform to the standard number of lines,...

Set during South African apartheid, The Island is a play that Athol Fugard co-wrote with two writers and actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, both Black South Africans. The three men met when they were members of a drama group called the Serpent...

It is more than reasonable to say that Chretien de Troyes is one of the best-known Medieval authors (he is thought to have created the character of Lancelot). And Perceval, the Story of the Grail was supposed to be his fifth verse. Alas, the verse...

"Should Wizard Hit Mommy?" is a short story by American writer John Updike, about a man telling his daughter a bedtime story, and in the process revealing the dynamics of their own family life. First published in The New Yorker on June 13th, 1959,...

Stephen Frears's film The Queen, released in 2006, broadly tells the story of Princess Diana's tragic death and the response (or lack thereof) of the royal family in the days following her death. Particularly, the film centers on Queen Elizabeth...

The Testament of Cresseid is a narrative poem written by Robert Henryson sometime in the 15th-century. The poem was translated into modern English by Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, in 2009.

The poem follows the life of Trojan woman, Cresseid, who...

Vathek is a Gothic novel written by English novelist William Beckford. The book was first published in 1786, with the original title being "An Arabian Tale, From an Unpublished Manuscript." Originally, it was claimed the novel was translated from...

The Black Atlantic is a non-fiction historical book about a distinct "black Atlantic" culture and identity, which includes aspects of African, Caribbean, American, and British cultures simultaneously. The book was published in 1993 by Harvard...

Sir Orfeo is a Middle English narrative lay written by an anonymous author in the late 13th or early 14th century. It is a retelling of the story of the ancient Greek Prophet, Orpheus, and his brave quest to rescue his wife from the Fairy King.

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From one of the most prominent authors of today, Stardust is another Neil Gaiman’s successful fantasy novel set in the 19th century in meadows of England. The novel was also adapted into a successful movie in the year 2007.

The novel’s protagonist...

It is often said that Stephen King's On Writing is arguably one of the most important books that explores the craft of writing. Over the course of this 291 page book, King writes about his career as a best-selling, award-winning writer and how he...

Morning Star is a science fiction novel written by novelist Pierce Brown, and is part three of his Red Rising trilogy. The book was published in the US on February 9, 2016 by Del Rey Books. It si preceded by both Red Rising (2014) and Golden Son...

The second novel in author Pierce Brown's Red Rising trilogy, Golden Sun (originally published in 2015, just one year after the first novel in the trilogy), continues Darrow's story as he still struggles to destroy the society on future Mars from...

The first book in what later became a trilogy of the same name, Red Rising (which was originally published in 2014), tells the incredibly compelling story of a lowborn miner called Darrow, who has grown up on Mars (in the future) yearning for a...

Produced for the first time at Griffin Theatre Company in 1986, Away is the best known of Michael Gow's plays, both within Australia and around the world. Gow had just turned 30 before the play was written, and in writing it, Gow has said that he...