literature quiz bowl study set
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Luigi Pirandello
OF HUMAN BONDAGE
Somerset Maugham
WOMEN IN LOVE
D.H. Lawrence
THE HEART OF THE MATTER
Graham Greene
Shane
Jack Shaffer
A play by Henrik Ibsen. It describes the events of a family in christmas time who were unsuccessful last year but this year are in a good state. It shows how they have a bunch of visitors who reveal the bad people they have become.
A Doll's House
A novel written by Tennessee Williams, Blanche Dubois moves to her sisters house after her family house is taken by creditors and her experiences in her new town as her old secrets are exposed.
A Streetcar Named Desire
Winnie-the-Pooh
A.A. Milne
H.M.S. Pinafore (W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, 1878)
Aboard the title ship, Josephine promises her father, the captain, that she will marry Sir Joseph Porter, but Josephine secretly loves the common sailor Ralph Rackstraw, and the two plan to elope. A peddler named Buttercup reveals that she accidentally switched the captain and Ralph at birth: Ralph is of noble birth and should be captain, while the captain is nothing more than a common sailor. Ralph, now captain, marries Josephine, and the former captain marries Buttercup. Like The Pirates of Penzance, songs are named after their first lines; they include "We sail the ocean blue," "I'm called Little Buttercup," and "Pretty daughter of mine."
Aunt Jennifer's Rigers, Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law
Adrienne Rich
The First Circle, Cancer Ward, Gulag Archipelago, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Roots
Alex Haley
The Bronze Horseman, Boris Godunov, Eugene Onegin, The Captain's Daughter
Alexandr Pushkin
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas
The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas (the elder)
The Devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce
The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan
The Kitchen God's Wife
Amy Tan
A George Orwell novel following a farm, in which pigs Napoleon and Snowflake take over a farm in a really good allegory to communist Russia.
Animal Farm
A Leo Tolstoy novel in which the title character falls in love with a count, though she is married. The novel follows the life of the russian aristocracy and their life.
Anna Karenina
Black Beauty
Anna Sewell
The Birds, The Frogs, Lysistrata, The Clouds
Aristophanes
THE OLD WIVES' TALE
Arnold Bennett
Miss Julie
August Strindberg
Anthem
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand
A hindu epic that if Devaansh doesn't know, well, something is very very wrong. It centers around Krishna, an avatar of the hindu god Vishnu, giving the prince Arjun a pep talk before going to war.
Bhagavad Gita
Herman Melville's last novel. A seaman impressed into British service, who are dealing with a lot of problems.
Billy Budd: Foretopman
Penrod, Seventeen, Alice Adams, the Magnificent Ambersons
Booth Tarkington
THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS
Booth Tarkington
The Magnificent Ambersons
Booth Tarkington
Dracula
Bram Stoker
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers
Rootabaga Stories, The American Songbag, Abraham Lincoln, Chicago Poems, Smoke and Steel
Carl Sandburg
My Name is Asher Lev
Chaim Potok
The Chosen
Chaim Potok
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
Journal of the Plague Year
Daniel Defoe
Charlotte's Web
E.B. White
Stuart Little
E.B. White
The Enormous Room, Pity This Busy Monster Manunkind, In Just Spring
E.E. Cummings
RAGTIME
E.L. Doctorow
Ragtime
E.L. Doctorow
Father of the Cride
Ed Streeter
The Bells, The Cask of Amontillado, The Masque of Red Death
Edgar Allan Poe
Cyrano de Bergerac
Edmond Rostand
The Faerie Queen
Edmund Spenser
Pollyanna
Eleanor Hodgeman Porter
All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque
A HANDFUL OF DUST
Evelyn Waugh
Bambi
Felix Salten
The Marriage of Figaro (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lorenzo Da Ponte, 1786)
Figaro and Susanna are servants of Count Almaviva who plan to marry, but this plan is complicated by the older Marcellina who wants to wed Figaro, the Count — who has made unwanted advances to Susanna —, and Don Bartolo, who has a loan that Figaro has sworn he will repay before he marries. The issues are resolved with a series of complicated schemes that involve impersonating other characters, including the page Cherubino. The opera is based on a comedy by Pierre de Beaumarchais. Many of the same characters also appear in The Barber of Seville!
The Trial, The Castle, Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Fulton Oursler
A rose is a rose is a rose, The Making of Americans, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Gertrude Stein
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Gertrude Stein
Queen Gertrude, Polonius, Laertes, King Claudius, Ophelia, Horatio, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern
Hamlet
Civil Disobedience, Walden
Henry David Thoreau
A poem written by Homer that describes the Greek siege of Troy.
Illiad
Harry Potter series
J.K. Rowling
The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkein
ON THE ROAD
Jack Kerouac
On the Road
Jack Kerouac
THE CALL OF THE WILD
Jack London
White Fang
Jack London
White Fang, the Sea Wolf
Jack London
A Death In The Family
James Agee
Shogun
James Clavell
Pilgrim's Progress
John Bunyan
THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES
John Cheever
The 42nd Parallel, 1919, Big Money, Manhattan Transfer
John Dos Passos
The Prophet
Kahlil Gibran
The Awakening
Kate Chopin
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
Arthur, Constance
King John
Sermons of Mr. Yorick, Journal to Eliza, A Sentimental Journey, Tristram Shandy
Laurence Sterne
Ben Hur
Lew Wallace
Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass
Lewis Carroll
The Little Foxes
Lillian Hellman
Child Harold's Pilgrimage, Don Juan
Lord Byron (George Gordon)
Andersonville
MacKinlay Kantor
A drama written by Shakespeare is about a Scottish general who receives a prophecy that he will become king of Scotland. Spurred by his wife and his own ambitions, he murders the king and starts a disastrous rule.
Macbeth
Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell
The Godfather
Mario Puzo
The Blue Bird
Maurice Maeterlinck
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes
The School for Wives, The School for Husbands, The Imaginary Invalid, The Miser, Tartuffe, The Bourgeois Gentleman, The Misanthrope
Moliere
Beatrice, Benedick
Much Ado About Nothing
THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE
Muriel Spark
Tuck Everlasting
Natalie Babbitt
THE DAY OF THE LOCUST
Nathanael West
Inspector General, Taras Bulba, Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol
Zorba the Greek
Nikos Kazantzakis
THE NAKED AND THE DEAD
Norman Mailer
Giants in the Earth
O.E. Rolvaag
Giants in the Earth
Ole Rolvaag
The Vicar of Wakefield, She Stoops to Conquer
Oliver Goldsmith
Cassio, Iago, Desdamona
Othello
Thaisa, Marina, Gower
Pericles Prince of Tyre
A noel by Jane Austen, depicts a family of 5 sisters and their parents as they fall in love with aristocrats for various reasons.
Pride and Prejudice
A very strange french novel in which the main character is run out of his home, people keep coming back to life, and the characters some how end up in El Dorado.
Pygmallion
Gitanjali
Rabindranath Tagore
INVISIBLE MAN
Ralph Ellison
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison
The Plague Dogs, Watership Down
Richard Adams
Just So Stories
Rudyard Kipling
KIM
Rudyard Kipling
Kim
Rudyard Kipling
Mandalay, Gunga Din, Captains Courageous, Kim, The Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling
The Outsiders
S.E. Hinton
MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN
Salman Rushdie
The Tooth of Crime, Buried Child, Mad Dog Blues, Paris Texas
Sam Shepard
Waiting for Godot, Endgame
Samuel Beckett
THE WAY OF ALL FLESH
Samuel Butler
The Way of All Flesh, Erewhon
Samuel Butler
Pamela, Clarissa
Samuel Richardson
HENDERSON THE RAIN KING
Saul Bellow
Island of the Blue Dolphins
Scott O'Dell
The Wonderful Adeventures of Nils, The Ring of Lowenskolds, The Story of Gosta Berling
Selma Lagerlöf
Arrowsmith
Sinclair Lewis
Dodsworth
Sinclair Lewis
Elmer Gantry
Sinclair Lewis
Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth, Babbit, Main Street, Arrowsmith
Sinclair Lewis
Anubis
Son of Osiris and Nepthys, and god of embalming to the Egyptians, he was typically pictured with the head of a jackal. He also served as the god of the desert and the watcher of the tombs. He also served to introduce the dead to the afterlife, and as their judge. To decide the fate of the dead, Anubis would weigh the heart of the dead against the feather of truth. Anubis is sometimes identified with Hermes or Mercury.
A Walter Whitman poem which uses the word I a lot, was a part of his work Leaves of Grass.
Song of Myself
Oedipus Rex, Antigone
Sophocles
The Charterhouse of Parma, The Red and the Black
Stendhal
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
Stephen Crane
The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, The Open Boat and Other Stories, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
Stephen Crane
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath
The Bell Jar, The Colossus
Sylvia Plath
Four Quartets, Murder in the Cathedral, The Hollow Men
T.S. Elliot
Summer and Smoke, Suddenly Last Summer, Camino Real, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams
Nephthys
Termed the "lady of the castle," for her role as guardian of tombs, she sided against her own husband, Set, in his battle against Osiris, but when Set was destroyed, she collected the bits of his body and brought him back to life, much as Isis had done for Osiris. In addition to being Isis' sister, she was also said to be Osiris' mistress, leading to much complaint from Isis. Due to her close ties to all the other gods, she was rarely associated with a cult of her own.
A poem by Dante, describing his descent to hell, and his visits to Purgatory, and finally, Heaven.
The Divine Comedy
Boris Godunov (Modest Mussorgsky, 1874)
The opera's prologue shows Boris Godunov, the chief adviser of Ivan the Terrible, being pressured to assume the throne after Ivan's two children die. In the first act the religious novice Grigori decides that he will impersonate that younger son, Dmitri (the [first] "false Dmitri"), whom, it turns out, Boris had killed. Grigori raises a general revolt and Boris' health falls apart as he is taunted by military defeats and dreams of the murdered tsarevich. The opera ends with Boris dying in front of the assembled boyars (noblemen).
The Music Man (Meredith Wilson and Franklin Lacey, 1957)
The swindler Harold Hill attempts to con the families of River City, Iowa by starting a boys' band. While there, he falls in love with the librarian Marian Paroo. The scheme is exposed, but the town forgives him. Notable songs include "Trouble" (the origin of the phrase "trouble in River City"), "Seventy-Six Trombones," "Shipoopi," "Gary, Indiana," and "Till There was You."
The Merchant of Venice
The title character of The Merchant of Venice is not Shylock — who is a money-lender — but Antonio.
Angels in America
Tony Kushner
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair
The Skin of Our Teeth, The Matchmaker, Our Town, The Bridge of San Luis Ray
Thornton Wilder
Alcibiadies, Apemantus
Timon of Athens
Lavinia, Tamora
Titus Andronicus
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Truman Capote
In Cold Blood
Truman Capote
In Cold Blood, Other Voices Other Rooms, Breakfast at Tiffany's
Truman Capote
The Aenied
Vergil
Bucolics, Georgics, The Aeneid
Virgil
The Age of Anxiety
W.H. Auden
A History of New York, The Legends of Alhambra
Washington Irving
Green Mansions
William Henry Hudson
DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP
Willa Cather
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather
My Antonia
Willa Cather
The Human Comedy
William Saroyan
Riders of the Purple Sage
Zane Grey
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
Pandora (meaning "gifted" or "all gifts")
first human woman in Greek mythology. Hephaestus sculpted her from clay as a punishment for humanity after Prometheus stole fire from the gods. The primary myth of Pandora relates how she released all the evils of the world by opening a jar ("Pandora's Box"), and when she closed the lid only hope remained within. Pandora married the Titan Epimetheus, and their daughter Pyrrha survived the Greek flood with her husband Deucalion.
Camille
Alexandre Dumas (the younger)
THE MALTESE FALCON
Dashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett
The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett
South Pacific (Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Joshua Logan, 1949)
During the Pacific Theater of World War II, Nellie Forbush, a U.S. Navy nurse, has fallen in love with Émile, a French plantation owner. Émile helps Lieutenant Cable carry out an espionage mission against the Japanese. The mission is successful, and Émile and Nellie reunite. Featuring the songs "Some Enchanted Evening," "There is Nothing Like a Dame," and "I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right Outta My Hair," it is adapted from James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific.
Flappers and Philosophers, The Beautiful and the Damned, The Last Tycoon, Tender Is the Night, This Side of Paradise
F. Scott Fitzgerald
TENDER IS THE NIGHT
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Tender is the Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Beautiful and the Damned
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Last Tycoon
F. Scott Fitzgerald
This Side of Paradise
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Good Country People, A Good Man is Hard to Find, Everything that Rises Must Converge, The Violent Bear it Away, Wise Blood
Flannery O'Conner
PARADE'S END
Ford Madox Ford
THE GOOD SOLDIER
Ford Madox Ford
A Victor Hugo novel following various characters and their misfortunes and interactions, but being centered around Jean Valjean as he goes from poor street urchin to wealthy father.
Les Miserables
A William Shakespeare drama. A bunch of sodiers come home. A man disguises himself and dances with a pretty woman, who tells him he is a fool without knowing it, enraging him as he tries to get revenge.
Much Ado about Nothing
A drama written by Sophocles, this play revolves around an Ancient Greek hero who has gained the kingship of Thebes, and his growing horror as he realizes that a prophecy given to his father has come true.
Oedipus Rex
A John Steinbeck Novella. It describes two men, one uneducated but intelligent, named George, and one big strong mentally disabled guy named Lennie. They have a dream of settling down, with Lennie just wanting to pet bunnies because he loves soft things, but always ends up accidently killing them.
Of Mice and Men
The Harry Potter novel in which Snape becomes the professor of the dark arts and Ron learns that Hermione had kissed Victor Krum.
The Half Blood Prince
A Nathaniel Hawthorne novel. It describes a family trying to escape their pasts and to move on, dealing with a family curse and depression.
The House of the Seven Gables
A Victor Hugo novel. Set in the city of Notre Dame, a gypsy is framed for murdering someone and is killed, while her lover goes insane.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
A play by Arthur Wilde. It shows how a man makes one lie, which keeps on multiplying as he struggles to maintain it.
The Importance of Being Earnest
The first segment of Dante's divine comedy. Follows his journey into hell and his ascent up.
The Inferno
Frigg (or Frigga)
The wife of Odin, and mother by him of Balder, Hoder, Hermod, and Tyr. She is the goddess of the sky, marriage, and motherhood, and often works at her loom, spinning clouds.
An Achebe novel. Follows the novels protagonist, whose a famous wrestler in his region, try to make a lot of money. He accidently kills a boy he's the guardian of and is really guilty. Then his daughter dies. During a salute his gun explodes and accidentally kills someone. He returns to find his village changed by white men.
Things Fall Apart
Chimera
hybrid monster who was also a child of Typhon and Echidna. She is most commonly described as a lioness with a goat's head protruding from her back and a tail that ended in a snake's head. She was a fire-breathing menace to Lycia until Bellerophon slew her on orders from King Iobates. Flying on the back of Pegasus, Bellerophon shot at the Chimera and ultimately killed the beast by affixing a block of lead to his spear and causing the Chimera to melt the block with her fiery breath, suffocating her in the process.
Looking Backward
Edward Bellamy
A Book of Nonsense, Laughable Lyrics
Edward Lear
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen
The Seagull, The Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard
Anton Chekov
Enobarbus, Charmian, Iras
Antony and Cleopatra
Thor
A son of Odin and the giantess Jord, he is the god of thunder, weather, and crops. One of the most popular of the Norse gods, he travels in a chariot pulled by two goats, and wields the hammer Mjölnir. He is married to Sif, and his special nemesis is the Midgard Serpent
Patroclus
Achilles' foster brother and closest friend. Although Patroclus is a formidable hero, he is valued for his kind and gentle nature. Patroclus is killed by Hector while wearing the armor of Achilles
Isabel Allende (1942-present, Chile)
Actually born in Peru, at age three she moved to her mother's native Chile. A successful news reporter in her twenties, she and her family fled to Venezuela after General Augusto Pinochet deposed her uncle Salvador Allende, setting up a dictatorship. Her formal literary career began at age 40, when she published The House of the Spirits, a magical-realist work that chronicles several generations of the Trueba family. Other works of fiction include the short-story collection Eva Luna (1989) and Paula (1995), which detailed Allende's care for her terminally ill daughter.
The Accidental Tourist
Anne Tyler
The Color Purple
Alice Walker
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
Anthony Burgess
Agnes Gray, Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Anne Bronte
My Fair Lady (Frederick Loewe; Alan Jay Lerner; Alan Jay Lerner; 1956)
As part of a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering, the phonetics professor Henry Higgins transforms the Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a proper lady. After Eliza falls for Freddy Eynsforth-Hill, Higgins realizes he is in love with Eliza. Eliza returns to Higgins' home in the final scene. It is adapted from George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, and its most famous songs are "The Rain in Spain" and "Get Me to the Church on Time."
How Much Land Does a Man Need? (1886) by Leo Tolstoy
At the start of the story, a peasant named Pahom listens to his wife and sister-in-law debate whether it is better to live in the town or the country. Pahom thinks "if I had plenty of land, I wouldn't fear the Devil himself!"—which the Devil hears from behind the stove. Shortly thereafter, Pahom purchases land from a village woman. He becomes exceedingly jealous and protective of his property, causing him to quarrel with his neighbors and the local judges. Learning of rich land elsewhere, Pahom moves his family, but still is not satisfied. Desirous of acquiring even more land, Pahom visits the nomadic Bashkirs. Their chief, who is possibly the Devil in disguise, says that one thousand roubles will buy as much land as Pahom can walk around in a single day. However, if Pahom does not return to his starting point by sunset, both the money and the land are forfeit. In his greed, Pahom ventures too far. He sprints back while the chief laughs, just as the Devil did in one of Pahom's dreams. Pahom returns to the starting point just in time, but immediately drops dead from exhaustion. A servant buries Pahom in a grave that is six feet long, thus answering the story's title question: a man only needs six feet of land.
The Piano Lesson, Fences
August Wilson
A novel by Toni Morrison. The book concerns a girl name Denver, and her mom, Sethe. It's how they escape slavery, and the haunting in their house that has destroyed their life.
Beloved
The Alchemist, Volpone
Ben Johnson
Poor Richard's Almanack
Benjamin Franklin
An old english poem with over 3000 alliterate lines, the poet was unknown. It follows a hero known as Beowulf, who discovers a monster has attacked and killed a lot of people under the command of the warrior Hrothgar. Once there he kills the monster Grendel, but the monsters mom comes for revenge.
Beowulf
A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams, 1947).
Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski represent Williams's two visions of the South: declining "old romantic" vs. the harsh modern era. Blanche is a Southern belle who lost the family estate, and is forced to move into her sister Stella's New Orleans apartment. Stella's husband Stanley is rough around the edges, but sees through Blanche's artifice; he ruins Blanche's chance to marry his friend Mitch by revealing to Mitch that Blanche was a prostitute. Then, after Blanche confronts Stanley, he rapes her, driving her into insanity. The drama was developed into a movie, marking the breakthrough performance of method actor Marlon Brando.
A Aldous Huxley novel. It describes a dystopian future with a caste system, and while one character is socially accepted, another cannot be because he is too short.
Brave New World
Annie Get Your Gun (Irving Berlin, Herbert Fields, and Dorothy Fields, 1946)
Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show comes to town, and performer Frank Butler challenges anyone to a shooting contest. Annie Oakley wins the contest and joins the show. She and Frank fall in love, but Frank quits out of jealousy that Annie is a better shooter than he is. The title role was originated by Ethel Merman. The show includes the songs "There's No Business Like Show Business," "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly," and "Anything You Can Do."
Cabaret (Fred Kander; John Ebb; Jon Masteroff; 1966)
Cabaret is set in the seedy Kit-Kat Club in Berlin during the Weimer era. The risqué Master of Ceremonies presides over the action ("Wilkommen"). The British lounge singer Sally Bowles falls in love with the American writer Cliff Bradshaw, but the two break up as the Nazis come to power. Adapted into an Academy Award-winning 1972 film starring Liza Minelli and Joel Grey, it is based on Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin.
Slaughterhouse Five
Kurt Vonnegut
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
Carson McCullers
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
Things Fall Apart, Anthills of the Savannah
Chinua Achebe
Volumnia, Virgilia, Tullus Aufudius
Coriolanus
The Barber of Seville (Gioacchino Rossini, Cesare Sterbini, 1816)
Count Almaviva loves Rosina, the ward of Dr. Bartolo. Figaro (who brags about his wit in "Largo al factotum") promises to help him win the girl. He tries the guise of the poor student Lindoro, a drunken soldier, and then a replacement music teacher, all of which are penetrated by Dr. Bartolo. Eventually they succeed by climbing in with a ladder and bribing the notary who was to marry Rosina to Dr. Bartolo himself. This opera is also based on a work of Pierre de Beaumarchais and is a prequel to The Marriage of Figaro.
Death of Ivan Ilyich, Anna Karenina, War And Peace
Count Leo Tolstoy
Set
Created in opposition to the forces of Ma'at, Set (termed Typhon by Plutarch) fought the demon Apopis each day, emerging victorious, symbolic of the struggle of forces that brought harmony. In later times, this struggle led Set to be associated with the serpent itself, and Set became the personification of violence and disorder, and the cause of all disasters. Having killed his brother Osiris, Set did battle with Osiris' son Horus, being emasculated in the fight. His cult was diminished over time, due to reaction against violence. His effigies were destroyed by some, while others were changed into representations of Amon, by replacing the ears with horns.
A novel by Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky follow a troubled student and his murders to achieve a higher purpose, all the while being pursued by the law.
Crime and Punishment
An Alan Paton novel. In a remote South African village, a man finds out his sister is sick. After a difficult journey, he finds out his sister as hit liquor and other bad stuff. As he helps her, he notices the racial inequality in his country.
Cry, the Beloved Country
Imogen, Cloten, Posthumus
Cymbelline
The Rocking-Horse Winner, The Rainbow, Women in Love
D.H. Lawerence
A Lord Byron poem. It is a satire in which a man, who was originally a womanizer, is easily seduced by women.
Don Juan
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Edward Albee
A PASSAGE TO INDIA
E.M. Forster
A ROOM WITH A VIEW
E.M. Forster
Aspects of the Novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread, Howards End, A Room With a View, A Passage to India
E.M. Forster
HOWARDS END
E.M. Forster
Volpone (Ben Jonson, 1605)
Each character in this Jonson play is based on an animal archetype. The greedy Venetian noble Volpone (named for the Italian for "fox") cajoles gifts from men named Corbaccio ("raven"), Corvino ("crow"), and Voltore ("vulture") by faking a fatal illness, and separately promising his fortune to each man. At the urging of Volpone's servant Mosca ("fly"), Corbaccio agrees to disinherit his own son Bonario by writing a new will that will name Volpone as sole heir. Volpone also engages in stratagems to sleep with Corvino's wife Celia, although his attempt to rape her is foiled by Bonario. In a subplot, the English traveler Peregrine humiliates a foolish fellow countryman named Sir Politick Would-Be. After a trial, Volpone fakes his death and names Mosca his sole heir; Mosca's ensuing behavior prompts Volpone to reveal himself, resulting in the punishment of all wrongdoing
The House Without a Key
Earl Biggers
THE HOUSE OF MIRTH
Edith Wharton
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton
The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton
The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton
Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christe, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Mourning Bevomes Electra, The Emperor Jones, Desire Under the Elms
Eugene O'Neil
Tobacco Road
Erskine Caldwell
Johnny Tremain
Esther Forbes
The Wide Net, Losing Battles, The Ponder Heart, Delta Wedding, The Optimist's Daughter
Eudora Welty
The Bald Soprano, Rhinoceros
Eugene Ionesco
A Ivan Turgenev novel. Follows a pair of sibling return home to meet their father, and their relationship with each other.
Fathers and Sons
A Goethe poem. It starts off with the devil's agent saying he can turn away god's favorite human, the main character, and then attempts to and succeeds in doing so with the help of the devil.
Faust
Notes from the Underground, The Possessed, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamozov, Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Love in the Time of Cholera, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer
Troilus and Criseyde, Book of the Duchess, Roman de la Rose
Geoffrey Chaucer
Trillby, Peter Ibbetson
George Du Maurier
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert
We Real Cool, A Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen
Gwendolyn Brooks
A Short History of the World, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man
H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man
H.G. Wells
The Time Machine
H.G. Wells
The War of the Worlds
H.G. Wells
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Hathor
Hathor (or Athor or Athyr) was the patron of women. Hathor was the daughter of Ra and the wife of Horus. She fulfilled many functions as goddess of the sky, goddess of fertility, protector of marriage, and goddess of love and beauty. In that final role she became equated with Aphrodite and Venus. Pictures of Hathor show the goddess with the head of a cow
When We Dead Awaken, The Master Builder, Wild Duck, An Enemy of the People, Peer Gynt, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler
Henrik Ibsen
A Raisin in the Sun (Lorraine Hansberry, 1959).
Her father's 1940 court fight against racist housing laws provided the basis for Hansberry's play about the Younger family, who attempt to move into an all-white Chicago suburb but are confronted by discrimination. The first play by an African-American woman to be performed on Broadway, it also tore down the racial stereotyping found in other works of the time. The title comes from the Langston Hughes poem "Harlem" (often called "A Dream Deferred").
Benito Cereno, Bartleby the Scrivener, Omoo, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life
Herman Melville
Omoo
Herman Melville
Iliad
Homer
Illiad, Odyssey
Homer
The Odyssey
Homer
The Human Comedy
Honore De Balzac
The Castle of Otranto
Horace Walpole
Ragged Dick
Horatio Alger
Osiris
Husband of Isis, father of Horus, and brother of Set, Osiris served as god of the underworld and protector of the dead. In addition to his role as the chief and judge of the underworld (as a result of the above-mentioned murder by Set), Osiris also served as a god of vegetation and renewal; festivals honoring his death occurred around the time of the Nile flood's retreat. Statues representing him were made of clay and grain, which would then germinate. Osiris was represented either as a green mummy, or wearing the Atef, a plumed crown
Diomedes
In his day of glory, Diomedes kills Pandarus and wounds Aeneas before taking on the gods. He stabs Aphrodite in the wrist and, with Athena as his charioteer, wounds Ares in the stomach. Along with Odysseus, he also conducts a successful night raid against King Rhesus.
Jesus Christ Superstar (Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, 1971)
In the week leading up to the crucifixion, Judas grows angry with Christ's claims of divinity, and Mary Magdalene laments her romantic feelings for Christ. Judas hangs himself, and Christ, though frustrated with God, accepts his fate. It includes the songs "I Don't Know How to Love Him," "Gethsemane," and "Trial Before Pilate."
She Stoops to Conquer (or, The Mistakes of a Night) (Oliver Goldsmith, 1773)
In this enduringly popular comedy, a wealthy gentleman's son named Charles Marlow is sent to visit the country home of Mr. Hardcastle, who has a beautiful daughter named Kate. On the way, Marlow and his companion George Hastings stop at an alehouse where Kate's half-brother, Tony Lumpkin, tricks them into thinking they are miles from their destination. Tony directs the travelers to Mr. Hardcastle's house, claiming it is an inn. There, Marlow and Hastings rudely treat the Hardcastles as innkeepers, which the Hardcastles patiently endure for the sake of their friendship with Marlow's wealthy father. At the same time, Kate discovers that Marlow is timid and reserved around high-born ladies, but is rakishly charming to lower-class women. Kate therefore "stoops" to impersonating a barmaid in order to woo Marlow. Meanwhile, Mrs. Hardcastle attempts to make her niece Constance Neville marry Tony. Constance, however, is secretly engaged to Hastings, and the pair try to obtain a casket of jewels that belongs to Constance, but which Mrs. Hardcastle carefully guards. In the end, Kate wins Marlow, and Tony discovers that he is older than the Hardcastles have led him to believe. Upon discovering he is an adult, Tony refuses the arranged marriage, freeing Constance to marry Hastings.
(The) Invisible Man
Invisible Man is a 1952 novel by Ralph Ellison about an unnamed African-American protagonist in search of personal identity. The Invisible Man is an 1897 novel by H. G. Wells about a man who has turned himself invisible but is slowly being driven insane
Emma
Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen
Franny and Zoey
J.D. Salinger
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE
J.D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
Phedre
Jean Racine
WIDE SARGASSO SEA
Jean Rhys
Being There, The Painted Bird
Jerzy Kosinski
The Sorrows of Young Werther, Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Heidi
Johanna Spyri
Salome (Richard Strauss based on the play by Oscar Wilde, 1905)
Jokanaan (John the Baptist) is imprisoned in the dungeons of King Herod. Herod's 15-year-old step-daughter Salome becomes obsessed with the prisoner's religious passion and is incensed when he ignores her advances. Later in the evening Herod orders Salome to dance for him (the "Dance of the Seven Veils"), but she refuses until he promises her "anything she wants." She asks for the head of Jokanaan and eventually receives it, after which a horrified Herod orders her to be killed; his soldiers crush her with their shields.
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Jonathan Edwards
A Modest Proposal, Gulliver's Travels
Jonathan Swift
Gulliver's Travels
Jonathan Swift
HEART OF DARKNESS
Joseph Conrad
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey
The Wind in the Williams
Kenneth Grahame
The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame
Arundel, Northwest Passage
Kenneth Roberts
A Shakespeare play about the slow descent into madness, as the title character slowly gives away chunks of his kingdom to 2 of this daughters cause they flatter him and slowly loses it all.
King Lear
Simple Speaks His Mind, Theme for English B, The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes
Terms of Endearment, The Last Picture Show, Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry
Exodus
Leon Uris
Mila 18, Battlecry, QB VII, Exodus, Armageddon
Leon Uris
The Rivals (Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1775)
Like Sheridan's later play The School for Scandal, The Rivals offers a satirical take on manners and courtship. The play's heroine is Lydia Languish, a wealthy heiress who loves reading novels, and who wants her own life to imitate the tropes of romantic fiction. To win Lydia's heart, the wealthy Captain Jack Absolute pretends to be the impoverished "Ensign Beverley." Lydia is also desired by the "country gentleman" Bob Acres and the Irish baronet Sir Lucius O'Trigger, the latter of whom sends letters via the maid Lucy. However, O'Trigger's letters are actually read and answered by Lydia's guardian Mrs. Malaprop, who is infatuated with O'Trigger and uses the pseudonym "Delia" in her correspondence. (Mrs. Malaprop's comical speech patterns gave rise to the English word "malapropism," which refers to the accidental substitution of one word for another that sounds similar, but has a different meaning.) Jack's father Sir Anthony Absolute eventually exposes Jack's deception, infuriating Lydia. Jack then has an abortive duel with Sir Lucius, leading Mrs. Malaprop to admit that she is "Delia." At the end of the play, Lydia and Jack reconcile, as do their friends, the quarreling lovers Julia and Faulkland
Watch on the Rhine, The Little Foxes, Toys in the Attic, The Children's Hour
Lillian Hellman
An Eugene O'Neil drama follows James Tyrone, a 65 year old famous for his car and classical roles. His wife is a recovering morphine addict. They are also worried about their son who has a bad cough. The mom may relapse, and their is a lot of suspicion in the house. The son gets tuberculosis, and the family starts falling apart.
Long Day's Journey into Night
A Raisin in the Sun
Lorraine Hansberry
The Yearling
Marjorie Rawlings
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Mark Twain
Guys and Dolls (Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling, and Abe Burrows, 1950)
Nathan Detroit runs an underground craps game but needs a location. To make enough money to use the Biltmore garage for his game, he bets the notorious gambler Sky Masterson that Sky can't convince a girl of Nathan's choice to go to Havana with him for dinner; Nathan chooses the righteous missionary Sarah Brown. Sky wins the bet but ends up having to bring a dozen sinning gamblers to a revival meeting. As Nathan attends the meeting, his long-suffering fiancée Adelaide, a nightclub dancer, is increasingly frustrated that their 14-year engagement has not led to marriage. At the meeting, Sky bets a large amount of money against the gamblers' souls, winning, and eventually convinces Sarah to marry him and Nathan to marry Adelaide. Adapted from short stories by Damon Runyon, the musical includes the songs "A Bushel and a Peck," "Luck Be a Lady," and "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat."
Oklahoma! (Richard Rodgers; Oscar Hammerstein II; Oscar Hammerstein II; 1943)
On the eve of Oklahoma's statehood, cowboy Curly McLain and sinister farmhand Judd compete for the love of Aunt Eller's niece, Laurey. Judd falls on his own knife after attacking Curly, and Curly and Laurey get married. A subplot concerns Ado Annie, who chooses cowboy Will Parker over the Persian peddler Ali Hakim. Featuring the songs "Oh What a Beautiful Mornin'" and "Oklahoma," it is often considered the first modern book musical.
A novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez which follows the Buendia family, which exhibit similar traits for a few generations, over many years, and their gradual descent into messed up ness.
One Hundred Years of Solititude
Analects
One of the "Four Books" used by the ancient Chinese for civil service study, it contains the sayings (aphorisms) of Confucius. The philosopher Confucius did not write or edit the words that make up the Analects; his disciples compiled them in the 5th or 4th century BC. Confucianism is more of a philosophical system than a religion, and Confucius thought of himself more as a teacher than as a spiritual leader. The Analects also contain some of the basic ideas found in Confucianism, such as ren (benevolence) and li (proper conduct)
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986, Argentina)
One-quarter English, Borges learned that language before he learned Spanish. Educated in Europe during World War I, he met a circle of avant-garde poets in Spain, which inspired him to found the ultraismo movement and publish the collection Fervor of Buenos Aires (1923) when he returned to Argentina. While working in a library, Borges developed his greatest short stories, collected in A Universal History of Infamy (1935), Ficciones (1944), and The Aleph (1949). By his fifties, a disorder inherited from his father had taken Borges's eyesight, but in 1962 he completed the influential story collection Labyrinths.
A Shakespeare drama about a general in the Venetian army. His friend, who was jealous of him, framed his wife of cheating. After he killed her, he realized the treachery, and died in despair.
Othello
Doctor Zhivago
Pasternak
A play by Thornton Wilder. The first act shows a wonderfully normal day, as the people are introduced to a town and their lives. We then skip forward 3 years, where we experience a very stressful morning as two characters are to be married, and both have breakdowns before they recover. In the last act, one member of the couple dies, and as the living one grieves, the dead one contemplates life and tries to forget everything.
Our Town
The Chocolate War
Robert Cormier
The Good Earth
Pearl S. Buck
The Cenci, Queen Mab, Defence of Poetry, Ozymandias, Adonais, Ode to the West Wind, Prometheus Unbound
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Jaws
Peter Benchley
The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Equus
Peter Shaffer
PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT
Philip Roth
The White Goddess, I Claudius
Robert Graves
Stranger in a Strange Land
Robert Heinlein
A Child's Garden of Verses, Kidnapped
Robert Louis Stevenson
Kidnapped
Robert Louis Stevenson
Ptah
Principal god of the city of Memphis, he was portrayed as a mummy, or wearing the beard of the gods on his chin. His godhood was achieved by himself, much like his creation power, done merely by act of will. A patron of craftsmen, he also was seen as a healer, in the form of a dwarf. In the death trilogy (Anubis, Osiris, Ptah), he was seen as the god of embalming. His wife was the cat-headed Sekhmet, and his son was the lotus god Nefertem.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Godwulf Manuscript
Robert Parker
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
The Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury
The October Country, Dandelion Wine, The Illustrated Man, I Sing the Body Electric
Ray Bradbury
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Richard Bach
School for Scandal, The Rivals
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
The Manchurian Candidate
Richard Condon
Two Years Before the Mast
Richard Henry Dana, Jr
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Richard Hughes
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, Henry Blingbroke
Richard II
King Edward IV, Edward, Henry Tudor
Richard III
Black Boy
Richard Wright
Eight men, Black Boy, Native Son, Uncle Tom's Children
Richard Wright
NATIVE SON
Richard Wright
Native Son
Richard Wright
Bells and Pomegranates, Men and Women, Fra Lippo Lippi, My Last Duchess
Robert Browning
Bhagavad Gita
Sanskrit for "The Song of God," it is a poem found in Book Six of the Hindu epic Mahabharata. Likely formalized in the 1st or 2nd century, the Bhagavad-Gita begins on the eve of a battle, when the prince Arjuna asks his charioteer Krishna (an avatar of Vishnu) about responsibility in dealing with the suffering that the impending battle will cause. Krishna tells Arjuna that humans possess a divine self within a material form, and that Arjuna's duty is to love God and do what is right without thinking of personal gain — some of the main tenets of Hinduism
Henderson the Rain King
Saul Bellow
Henderson the Rain King, Humboldt's Gift, Herzog, The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow
Herzog
Saul Bellow
Humboldt's Gift
Saul Bellow
THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH
Saul Bellow
MAIN STREET
Sinclair Lewis
Main Street
Sinclair Lewis
A Study in Scarlet, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Peter Pan
Sir James Barrie
Peter Pan
Sir James M. Barrie
Le Morte D'Arthur
Sir Thomas Malory
Heart of Midlothian, Waverly, Rob Roy
Sir Walter Scott
Ivanhoe
Sir Walter Scott
A Kurt Vonnegut novel about POW's in World War 2.
Slaughterhouse 5
The Moon and the Sixpence, Cakes and Ale, Of Human Bondage, The Razor's Edge
Somerset Maugham
Fiddler on the Roof (Jerry Bock; Sheldon Harnick; Joseph Stein; 1964)
Tevye is a lowly Jewish milkman in tsarist Russia ("If I Were a Rich Man"), and his daughters are anxious to get married ("Matchmaker"). Tzeitel marries the tailor Motel ("Sunrise, Sunset," "The Bottle Dance"), Hodel gets engaged to the radical student Perchik, and Chava falls in love with a Russian named Fyedka. The families leave their village, Anatevka, after a pogrom. It is adapted from Tevye and his Daughters by Sholem Aleichem.
Odin (or Wodin or Wotan)
The "All-Father," he is the leader of the Aesir, the principal group of Norse gods. He is a god of war, death, wisdom, poetry, and knowledge, and rides the eight-legged horse Sleipnir. He hung himself for nine days on the world-tree Yggsdrasil, pierced by his own spear, to gain knowledge, and traded one of his eyes for a drink from Mimir's well to gain wisdom.
Another Mark Twain novel, follows the titular character sail down the Mississippi River with an escaped slave because it is what he feels is right, and he wants to escape being "civilized"
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
A Mark Twain novel following the antics of the titular character living in the South, including trying to woo a girl and foiling a grave robber who framed a friend of his.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Edith Wharton's 12th novel. If follows a happy middle class couple about to marry, but the brides cousin appears and the scandal she brings ends in a social tragedy.
The Age of Innocence
A Henry James novel. It considers the adventures and misadventures of Christopher Newman, a businessman on his first tour of Europe.
The American
Madama Butterfly (Giacomo Puccini, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, 1904)
The American naval lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton is stationed in Nagasaki where, with the help of the broker Goro, he weds the young girl Cio-Cio-San (Madame Butterfly) with a marriage contract with a cancellation clause. He later returns to America, leaving Cio-Cio-San to raise their son "Trouble" (whom she will rename "Joy" upon his return). When Pinkerton and his new American wife Kate do return, Cio-Cio-San gives them her son and stabs herself with her father's dagger. The opera is based on a play by David Belasco.
A Jack London novel following a dog that is happily the pet of a judge. However, Buck, the dog, gets stolen, and after being sold a lot and beaten and trained, becomes a sled dog. He gets owners who are terrible, but is rescued by a great guy. A few years later, however, he is killed, and so after avenging his master, goes to the wild. A]
The Call of the Wild
A J.D Salinger novel describes Holden Caulfield. A teenager novel which follows the themes of loneliness and angst, a teen feels misunderstood by everyone and gets expelled from his school. He runs away, but his little sister gives him a reason to stay.
The Catcher in the Rye
A French novel about revenge. A poor man gets betrayed by his friends who take everything for him and think he's in jail forever. He gets out, though everyone thinks he's dead, and finds a treasure that makes him immeasurably rich. He buys an island to become a count, then goes for revenge.
The Count of Monte Cristo
A play written by Arthur Miller which is meant to be a commentary of Mccarthyism. Based off the Salem Witch Trials as a group of girls try to do a curse but are caught. To stay alive they name of a bunch of people as the witch or wizard.
The Crucible
Afterlife
The Egyptians believed that the soul had three components, the ba, ka, and akh, each of which had different roles after death. The ka remained near or within the body (which is why mummification was required). The ba went to the underworld where it merged with aspects of Osiris, but was allowed to periodically return (which is why Egyptian tombs often contained narrow doors). The akh could temporarily assume different physical forms and wander the world as a ghost of sorts. In the underworld, the ba was subjected to the Judgment of Osiris in the Hall of Double Justice, where the heart of the deceased was weighed against Ma'at, commonly represented as an ostrich feather.
An incomplete english poem by Edmund Spenser. It is split into a series of books that each revolve around a different character, who represents the embodiment of a specific virtue.
The Faerie Queene
An O.Henry short story about a poor couple that really loves each other. On Christmas eve, they both sell something that is dear to them for money to buy a gift, however, they realize the gift they bought each other connects to the object they sold.
The Gift of the Magi
A play by Tennessee Williams. The narrator Tom explains how his mom used to be a famous Southern belle but faded away, and his sister suffered a bout of polio which resulted in a limp that made her feel inferior. A boy named Jim leads her on, then crushes her.
The Glass Menagerie
A novel written by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, this novel centers around a man named Nick Carraway, who leaves his midwestern home to go to the east. After arriving he is introduced to Eastern culture, and after witnessing the story of a man, quickly becomes disgusted in Eastern culture.
The Great Gatsby
Cats (Andrew Lloyd Webber based on poems by T. S. Eliot; 1981)
The Jellicle tribe of cats roams the streets of London. They introduce the audience to various members: Rum Tum Tugger, Mungojerrie, Rumpleteazer, Mr. Mistoffelees, and Old Deuteronomy. Old Deuteronomy must choose a cat to be reborn, and he chooses the lowly Grizabella after she sings "Memory." It is adapted from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot
An Upton Sinclair novel in which a man tries to support his family by joining the meatpacking industry. The accurate horrors described led to various changes in the real world.
The Jungle
Novel set in Afghanistan and the USA about the relationship between an upper class Sunni boy and the Shia son of his family's servant.
The Kite Runner
A James Fenimore Cooper novel in which the last members of an Indian tribe join the a small party of British people in an attempt to safely deliver a colonel's daughter to is fort during the war of 1812.
The Last of the Mohicans
A civil war book following a private in the Union Army as he faces cowardness in his first real battle and attempts to get a wound, or a "Red Badge of Courage" to prove himself.
The Red Badge of Courage
A Coleridge poem. It describes an old sailors experiences with the sea.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
A Nathaniel Hawthorne novel in which the main character is marked with the letter A, because of her adultery, and how she fights this and attempts to move on.
The Scarlet Letter
A Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem about native americans and one of their greatest chiefs, the titular character.
The Song of Hiawatha
A Faulkner novel. It is narrated by various members of a family as they go through the world. The main character is mentally disabled and commits suicide, and the novel is an explanation of why .
The Sound and the Fury
An Albert Camus novel. Follows a man devoid of empathy or sympathy, as in the opening scene where he just drinks, smokes and comments on people at his mothers funeral and doesn't even look. Eventually he kills someone and is to be executed.
The Stranger
An Ernest Hemingway novel. On the surface it is a love story between a veteran. It features determination, perseverance, and other themes.
The Sun Also Rises
A Shakespeare play about how a man marries a "shrew" or a woman that voices her opinion and is nagging and grumpy and angry, understandable considering the era, and how he "tames" her into an obedient wife.
The Taming of the Shrew
A poem by Alfred, Lord, Tennyson, about England military maneuvers. (I think, info tough to find. )
The charge of the Light Brigade
Freya
The daughter of Njord and twin sister of Frey, she is also a Vanir hostage living with the Aesir. The goddess of love, passion, and human fertility, her possessions include a cloak that allows her to turn into a falcon, and the necklace Brisingamen. She travels in a chariot drawn by two cats.
Balder (or Baldur)
The fairest of the Aesir, he is the god of light, joy, and beauty. He dreamed of his own death, so Frigga extracted promises from everything not to harm Balder, but she skipped mistletoe. Loki tricked Balder's blind brother Hoder into killing him with a spear of mistletoe.
Revelation
The final book of the New Testament. In particular, it is singular. The full name varies from translation to translation, but sometimes appears as "The Revelation of St. John the Divine" or "Apocalypse of John."
Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957, Chile; Nobel 1945)
The first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Mistral was actually named Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, but took her pen name from the Italian and French poets Gabriele D'Annunzio and Frédéric Mistral respectively. At first a prominent educator, she wrote "Sonnets of Death" (1914) after the suicide of her fiancé. Those sonnets later appeared in her most famous collection, Desolation (1922). A native Chilean, she served as a diplomat both in the United States and Europe. Langston Hughes translated a portion of Mistral's poetry into English just after she died.
"The Waste Land"
The five parts of T. S. Eliot's 1922 masterpiece "The Waste Land" are "The Burial of the Dead," "A Game of Chess," "The Fire Sermon," "Death By Water," and "What the Thunder Said."
Horus
The god of the sky and light and the son of Isis and Osiris. In earlier myth he was the brother of Set, and son of Ra. His mother impregnated herself by the dead Osiris, then hid Horus. When he was grown, he avenged his father's death, driving away Set. In the battle, he lost his eye, but regained it thanks to the god Thoth. Thus Horus came to rule over the earth. He was known to have two faces, that of the falcon, Harsiesis, and that of a child, Harpocrates
Norns
The goddesses of destiny, represented as the three sisters Urd (or Wyrd), Verdandi (or Verthandi), and Skuld. The counterparts of the Greek Fates, they tend the Well of Fate at the roots of Yggdrasil.
Nestor
The king of Pylos, he is too old to participate in the fighting of the Trojan War, but serves as an advisor. He tells tales of "the good old days" to the other heroes.
The Lady with a Dog (1899) by Anton Chekhov
The married banker Dmitri Gurov has been on vacation by himself in Yalta for two weeks when he hears of a "new face" attracting attention, a lady with a dog. Dmitri meets the woman, Anna Sergeyevna von Diderits. She is vacationing without her spouse, as her marriage is unhappy—just like Dmitri's. The two sleep together. After returning to Moscow, Dmitri cannot forget the memory of Anna, and realizes he has fallen in love. He pretends to be going to Saint Petersburg for business, but instead travels to Anna's hometown. There, he finds her at the debut of a play titled The Geisha. Dmitri confronts Anna at the performance, and she confesses that she too has fallen in love. Anna begins making excuses to visit Moscow every few months to see Dmitri. The two fall deeper in love, but do not know how to leave their marriages. The story ends on an unresolved note, stating "to both of them it was clear that the end was still very far off, and that their hardest and most difficult period was only just beginning."
Gabriel García Marquez (1928-2014, Colombia; Nobel Prize for Literature 1982)
The master of magic realism, his birthplace, Aracataca was the model for the fictional town Macondo. The town played a prominent role in many of García Marquez's works, such as Leaf Storm and his seminal novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), which details the decline of the Buendía family over seven generations. A newspaper journalist in the 1950s, García Marquez exposed a naval scandal (chronicled in The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor). Other prominent novels include In Evil Hour, Love in the Time of Cholera, and The General in His Labyrinth, a depiction of Simón Bolívar's final years
Frey (or Freyr)
The son of Njord, and twin brother of Freya. He is one of the Vanir, a second group of Norse gods, but lives with the Aesir as a hostage. The god of fertility, horses, sun, and rain, his possessions include the magic ship Skidbladnir. He travels in a chariot drawn by the golden boar Gullinbursti, and had to give away his magic sword to win the hand of the giantess Gerda.
Hector
The son of Priam and Hecuba, he is probably the noblest character on either side. A favorite of Apollo, this captain of the Trojan forces exchanges gifts with Ajax after neither can conquer the other in single combat. He kills Patroclus when Patroclus goes into battle wearing the armor of his friend, Achilles. Killed by Achilles to avenge the death of Patroclus, he is greatly mourned by all of Troy. Funeral games take place in his honor.
The Queen of Spades (1834) by Alexander Pushkin
The story begins at a late-night gambling party given by the Russian army officer Naroumov. There, Tomsky discusses his own grandmother, a countess who once lost a fortune paying the card game faro in Paris, and who subsequently sought assistance from the Comte de Saint-Germain (a real historical figure). Saint-Germain taught the countess how to win back her money by playing a sequence of three cards. After hearing this tale, an engineering officer of German descent named Herman schemes to meet the countess by courting her ward Lizaveta, who tells Herman how to secretly enter the house. Herman accosts the countess, who refuses to reveal the names of the cards. When Herman draws a pistol, the countess dies of fright. At the countess's funeral, her corpse appears to wink at Herman. That night, Herman is visited by the countess's ghost, who tells him that the cards are the three, seven, and ace. Herman goes to the gambling salon of Chekalinsky, where he wins a massive sum of money by betting on the three. The following night, Herman wins again by betting on the seven. On the third night he intends to bet everything on the ace, but the card that he actually plays is the queen of spades. When Herman looks at the card, it seems to wink at him as the countess had done. Herman goes insane and is put in an asylum, where he spends his days muttering "three seven ace! Three seven queen!"
The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) by Leo Tolstoy
The story begins in a courtroom, as the death of the middle-aged magistrate Ivan Ilyich prompts other members of the legal profession to think about how the new vacancy will affect their status. The story then describes Ivan's unhappy marriage to Praskovya Fedorovna, and his move to Saint Petersburg. As he decorates his new house, Ivan has an accident while demonstrating how he wishes the curtains to be hung. The accident slowly causes Ivan to suffer increasing pain, during which he becomes dependant on the peasant servant Gerasim, and contemplates how meaningless his existence has been. At the end of his life, Ivan screams continuously for three days. Finally, Ivan sees light all around him at the same time that his son Vasya kisses his hand, and realizes that all he can do to end his family's suffering is to die. Ivan thus dies happily.
Sister Carrie
Theodore Dreiser
Cassandra
This daughter of Priam and Hecuba has an affair with Apollo, who grants her the gift of prophecy. Unable to revoke the gift after they quarrel, Apollo curses her by preventing anyone from believing her predictions. Among her warnings is that the Trojan horse contains Greeks. After Troy falls she is given to Agamemnon, who tactlessly brings her home to his wife Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus then kill Agamemnon and Cassandra, leaving Agamemnon's son Orestes (egged on by his sister Electra) to avenge the deaths and kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.
Seven Against Thebes (Aeschylus, c. 467 BC)
This early Greek tragedy tells the story of Oedipus's two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, who initially agreed to rule Thebes together before Eteocles seized the kingship for himself. Most of the play consists of a conversation between Eteocles, the chorus, and a spy who describes the seven captains who have arrived to besiege the seven gates of Thebes. After each man is described, Eteocles selects the warrior who will face that attacker. When the seventh attacker is revealed to be Polyneices, Eteocles sets off to confront his brother. At the conclusion of the play, it is announced that although Eteocles's forces have turned back the invaders, the brothers have slain each other. Antigone, the sister of Eteocles and Polyneices, vows to defy the laws of Thebes by giving Polyneices a proper burial.
Worship of Aton
This is actually a historical episode: during the reign of Amenhotep III (1390-1353 BC), worship of the god Aton (or Aten) — a representation of the disk of the sun — was resurrected. This process was carried to its extreme conclusion by his successor, Amenhotep IV, who eventually declared Aton to be the only god, thereby creating one of the earliest known monotheistic religions. The pharaoh even changed his name to Akhenaton, meaning "Aton is satisfied." The worship of Aton was centered on the capital city Tell-al-Amarna, and was largely confined to upper classes and the pharaonic court; it did not survive Amenhotep. Under his successor, Tutankhamen (King Tut), traditional religious practices were restored.
The Name of the Rose (1980) by Umberto Eco
This mystery is set in 1327 at a Catholic conference to resolve a potential heresy. William of Baskerville and his novice, Adso of Melk, are tasked with investigating the death of the comical manuscript artist Adelmo. The abbey's librarian, Malachi, bars the two men from entering a mysterious, labyrinthine library, so they meet with Jorge of Burgos, a blind monk who hates laughter. The next day, after the monk Venantius is found dead in a vat of pig blood, William and Adso find that both victims had sought out a book from a secret room called the Finis Africae. Upon breaking into the labyrinth, they find odd writings left by Venantius; later, the monks discover that Venantius's fingers and tongue were stained black. Eventually, William and Adso realize the letters above rooms in the library spell out regions of the world, and they locate the Finis Africae behind a mirror. As the conference ramps up, a monk named Severinus tells William about an odd book in his own library, but he is murdered before he can say more and the book goes missing. On the sixth day, Malachi is killed; his tongue and fingers are also black. On the final day of the conference, William and Adso enter the Finis Africae and find Jorge of Burgos within. Severinus's secret book is a sequel to Aristotle's Poetics, whose thoughts on comedy will undermine Christianity. Jorge poisoned the pages, knowing any reader would lick his fingers to turn them. Jorge then eats the manuscript, killing himself, but not before using Adso's lantern to set the library ablaze. William and Adso escape.
Murder on the Orient Express (1934) by Agatha Christie
This novel features Christie's popular Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, who is snowbound on the title train in the Balkans when a passenger named Samuel Ratchett is found stabbed to death. Thanks to a scrap of paper in Ratchett's compartment referencing "little Daisy Armstrong," Poirot realizes Ratchett is actually Lanfranco Cassetti, a man who was acquitted on technicality of kidnapping and murder (a crime inspired by the real-life kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's baby). Poirot discovers that all the passengers—including former Russian princess Natalia Dragomiroff—are concealing their pasts and each had a motive to kill Cassetti, and Poirot correctly deduces that all of them stabbed Cassetti. However, Poirot's alternate theory, that a stranger entered the snowbound train and randomly killed Ratchett, is the one presented to local authorities.
And Then There Were None (1940) by Agatha Christie
This novel is an example of a "country house mystery," a genre popularized by Christie in which possible suspects are limited due to the crime's isolated locale. The novel concerns ten murderers who have escaped justice and who are invited to an island mansion. After a mysterious record accuses each guest of their crimes, they begin turning up dead one by one. Vera Claythorne and Philip Lombard are the final two survivors; Vera, suspecting Philip of being the killer, shoots him dead, then returns to her room and hangs herself. The novel ends with a fisherman recovering a message in a bottle written by Justice Wargrave, one of the victims, who confesses he orchestrated all the killings in the name of "true justice." The novel was previously published under the title Ten Little Indians and an even earlier title that included a racial slur and was taken from a popular minstrel song whose lyrics—which allude to each victim's death—are framed and hung in the mansion's bedrooms.
Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill
This play is really a trilogy, consisting of "Homecoming," "The Hunted," and "The Haunted." Though it is set in post-Civil War New England, O'Neill used Aeschylus's tragedy The Oresteia as the basis for the plot. Lavinia Mannon desires revenge against her mother, Christine, who with the help of her lover Adam Brant has poisoned Lavinia's father Ezra; Lavinia persuades her brother Orin to kill Brant. A distressed Christine commits suicide, and, after Orin and Lavinia flee to the South Seas, Orin cannot stand the guilt and kills himself as well, leaving Lavinia in the house alone.
Ajax
This prince of Salamis is the son of Telamon. He once fights all afternoon in single combat with Hector; since neither one can decisively wound the other, they part as friends. Ajax's most glorious achievement is fighting the Trojans back from the ships almost singlehandedly. He commits suicide after the armor of Achilles is awarded to Odysseus rather than to himself
Aeneas
This son of Aphrodite and Anchises often takes a beating but always gets up to rejoin the battle. Knocked unconscious by a large rock thrown by Diomedes, he is evacuated by Aphrodite and Apollo. He succeeds the late Hector as Trojan troop commander and survives the fall of Troy, ultimately settling in Italy. His son Iulus founds Alba Longa, near the site of Rome. That bloodline is the basis of Julius Caesar's claim to have descended from Venus.
Odysseus
This son of Laertes is known for his cleverness and glib tongue. His accomplishments include a successful night raid against King Rhesus, winning the armor of Achilles, and engineering the famous Trojan Horse. His ten-year trip home to Ithaca (where his wife, Penelope, awaits) is the subject of the Odyssey.
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Tom Wolfe
Beloved
Toni Morrison
Sula
Toni Morrison
Sula, The Bluest Eye, Tar Baby
Toni Morrison
Tar Baby
Toni Morrison
A novel by Harper E. Lee, considered the all American novel.
To Kill a Mockingbird
A Robert Louis Stevenson novel in which Long John Silver, a pirate pursuing his old captain Billy Bones, attempts to recover treasure while the protagonist tries to claim it as well.
Treasure Island
A Jules Verne novel centered around an oceonologist going on a whaling trip for a great beast of the sea, only to discover it's a submarine called the Nautilus which is captained by the mysterious Captain Nemo.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Two different men; the father, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1894), was a physician, poet, and humorist who wrote "Old Ironsides" and The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. The son, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841-1935), was a justice of the Supreme Court known as "The Great Dissenter."
(The Tragical History of the Life and Death of) Doctor Faustus (Christopher Marlowe, c. 1593)
Two scholars named Valdes and Cornelius teach Faustus how to summon a demon, which Faustus promptly does, conjuring Mephistophilis. Faustus then signs his soul over to Lucifer, in exchange for 24 years of healthy life with Mephistophilis as his dutiful servant. Faustus constantly rejects the pleas of an angel to accept the forgiveness of God, instead traveling and gaining worldly fame. At one point, he summons the "shade" of Helen of Troy, and exclaims "was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" On the night his deal is scheduled to expire, a clock's chimes announce that Faustus is running out of time to repent. He never does, so devils appear and drag him to hell.
A novel by James Joyce which follows to main protagonists, and has title name reminiscent of a Greek epic. The novel was banned for a long time for obscenity, and is still considered pretty messed up.
Ulysses
The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco
A Harriet Beecher Stowe novel revolving around a slave and his relationship with his masters, and his path to freedom.
Uncle Tom's Cabin
A Wizard of Earthsea
Ursula Le Guin
Les Miserables
Victor Hugo
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Victor Hugo
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Miserables
Victor Hugo
Candide
Voltaire
The Age of Louis XIV, Brutus, Zaire, Candide
Voltaire
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-present, Peru)
While attending military school in Lima, Vargas Llosa wrote the play The Escape of the Inca (1952), but the harsh treatment he received there was the basis for his novel The Time of the Hero. Conversation in the Cathedral (1969) was Vargas Llosa's serious take on living under the dictatorship of Manuel Odría, while in 1977 he published the lighter, autobiographical Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, about soap operas. Other important works include The War of the End of the World and A Fish in the Water, which discusses his political career; Vargas Llosa ran for president of Peru in 1990 but was defeated by Alberto Fujimori.
O Pioneers!
Willa Cather
The Professor's House, One of Ours, Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather
Sounder
William Armstrong
Sounder, Sour Land
William Armstrong
The Tiger, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Songs of Experience, Songs of Innocence
William Blake
Sailing to Byzantium, The Second Coming, Easter 1916, Leda and the Swan
William Butler Yeats
Paterson
William Carlos Williams
The Way of the World
William Congreve
LORD OF THE FLIES
William Golding
Lord of the Flies
William Golding
IRONWEED
William Kennedy
Ironweed
William Kennedy
The Book of Snobs, The Virginians, Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray
The Human Comedy, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, The Time of Your Life
William Saroyan
King John, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice
William Shakespeare
SOPHIE'S CHOICE
William Styron
The Confessions of Nat Turner, Lie Down in Darkness, Sophie's Choice
William Styron
William Tell (Gioacchino Rossini, Étienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Bis, 1829)
William Tell is a 14th-century Swiss patriot who wishes to end Austria's domination of his country. In the first act he helps Leuthold, a fugitive, escape the Austrian governor, Gessler. In the third act, Gessler has placed his hat on a pole and ordered the men to bow to it. When Tell refuses, Gessler takes his son, Jemmy, and forces Tell to shoot an apple off his son's head. Tell succeeds, but is arrested anyway. In the fourth act, he escapes from the Austrians and his son sets their house on fire as a signal for the Swiss to rise in revolt. The opera was based on a play by Friedrich von Schiller.
The Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, Oresteia
Aeschylus
Interview with the Vampire
Anne Rice
A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME
Anthony Powell
Hotel
Arthur Hailey
The Ballad of Sad Cafe, The Member of the Wedding, Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers
Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), a pseudonym of Matsuo Munefusa
Generally acknowledged as the master of the haiku form, the most notable influences on his work were Zen Buddhism and his travels throughout Japan. He is noted for works like The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no hosomichi), which includes descriptions of local sights in both prose and haiku. He took his pseudonym from the name of the simple hut where he retired: Basho-an, which means "Cottage of the Plaintain Tree."
A Jonathon Swift novel about a man who travels to a land where he is a giant, and one where he is a midget.
Gullivers Travels
A Death in the Family
James Agee
DELIVERANCE
James Dickey
Deliverance
James Dickey
The Deerslayer
James Fenimore Cooper
The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper
It revolves around the lives of the residents of a fictitious midlands town, written by George Elliot. Significant themes include the status of women and marriage.
Middlemarch
The Quiet Don
Mikhail Sholokhov
The Marble Faun
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Executioner's Song
Norman Mailer
An epic Greek play written by Homer, follows a desperate Greek kings voyage to reunite with his family after fighting for ten years in the Trojan War, as his wife is being hounded by scores of suitors who think she's a widow.
Odyssey
The Chambered Nautilus, Deacon's Masterpiece, Old Ironsides, The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The Great Santini
Pat Conroy
The Prince of Tides
Pat Conroy
THE SHELTERING SKY
Paul Bowles
The Good Earth
Pearl Buck
Portnoy's Complaint
Philip Roth
Tam O' Shanter, To a Mouse, Auld Lang Syne
Robert Burns
I am the Cheese
Robert Cormier
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY
Theodore Dreiser
An American Tragedy
Theodore Dreiser
An American Tragedy, Sister Carrie
Theodore Dreiser
SISTER CARRIE
Theodore Dreiser
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Thomas Gray
The Spanish Tragedy
Thomas Kyd
Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012, Mexico)
Though born into a well-to-do family, Fuentes often dealt with the betrayed ideals from the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the subject of both his first novel, Where the Air is Clear (1958), and his most successful book, The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962). Other notable novels include Terra nostra, set during the reign of King Philip II of Spain, and The Old Gringo, which portrays Ambrose Bierce's last days in Mexico. Fuentes also wrote absurdist plays and essay collections on Mexican and American art and literature.
Aeneas, Hector, Diomedes, Calchas
Toilus and Cressida
As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner
The Calydonian Boar
monstrous beast sent by Artemis to wreak havoc in Calydon after King Oeneus neglected to honor her while sacrificing to the gods. Oeneus's son Meleager led a group of heroes — including Theseus, the twins Castor and Polydeuces (or Pollux), and Achilles's father Peleus, as well as the huntress Atalanta — on what became known as the Calydonian Boar Hunt. Atalanta drew first blood, and Meleager finished off the beast. Meleager, who had fallen in love with Atalanta, then insisted on honoring her by giving her the hide. Meleager's uncles protested, Meleager killed them, and Meleager's mother avenged the death of her brothers by burning up the log that represented Meleager's lifespan, killing him.
A dystopian novel by George Orwell, features 3 countries who have taken up all of the land on Earth, focusing on one where the ruler is a never seen dictator known as Big Brother.
1984
A Charles Dickens novel following the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge as the Christmas ghosts of Past Present and Futures arrive to try to instill in him some christmas spirit.
A Christmas Carol
A Ernest Hemingway novel set during the Italian Campaign during world war one, it's a first person account of a man as an ambulance driver falls in love with a nurse, with his experiences in the war. Ends when his child and wife die in birth.
A Farewell to Arms
A Shakespeare drama following multiple lovers and their interactions with each other on a warm night. during a marriage in the middle of a forest.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Thesus, Hippolyta, Oberon, Titania, Puck, Hermia, Helena, Demetrius, Lysander, Bottom, Flute, Quince
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Hansberry drama. It is an African American family living in the pre civil rights time. They are poor, but the sons are trying to become rich.
A Raisin in the Sun
A Charles Dickens novel set in the years leading up to the French Revolution. It follows two cities, France and London, and draws parallels between them.
A Tale of Two Cities
Les Misérables (Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, and Herbert Kretzmer, 1985)
A partial retelling of the Victor Hugo novel of the same name, this work follows Jean Valjean, who was convicted of stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving niece. He breaks his parole and is doggedly pursued by Inspector Javert. Several years later, the lives of Valjean, his adopted daughter Cosette, her lover Marius and his unrequited admirer Éponine, and Javert become intertwined on the barricades of an 1832 student rebellion in Paris. The longest-running show on London's West End, it features the songs "I Dreamed a Dream,", "Castle on a Cloud," "Master of the House," "Do You Hear the People Sing?", "One Day More," and "On My Own."
Ymir
A primordial giant who formed in the void Ginnungagap from fire and ice. He gave birth to the frost giants and created the primordial cow Audhumla. He was killed by Odin and his brothers, who used his body to construct most of the universe.
Octavio Paz (1914-1998, Mexico; Nobel 1990)
A prominent poet and essayist, Paz supported leftist causes in Mexico; he fought briefly for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. He published the poetry collection Luna silvestre at age 19, and his 584-line poem The Sun Stone deals with the planet Venus, an important symbol to the Aztecs. While studying in Los Angeles, Paz observed flamboyantly-dressed Mexican-American pachucos ("zoot-suiters"), who inspired him to write about Mexico and its Native American/mestizo heritage in his pivotal essay collection The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950). Another prose work, In the Light of India (1997), reflected Paz's part-(East) Indian heritage.
The Spanish Tragedy (or, Hieronimo is Mad Again) (Thomas Kyd, c. 1585)
A sensational hit when it was first performed, The Spanish Tragedy pioneered and popularized the gory genre known as the revenge tragedy. The play is set in the wake of a war between Portugal and Spain, during which the Spanish soldier Don Andrea was killed by the Portuguese prince Balthazar. After Andrea's death, Balthazar was captured by two Spanish soldiers: Lorenzo, the nephew of the King of Spain; and Horatio, the capable son of the marshal Hieronimo. As the play begins, Andrea's ghost has returned to Earth along with the spirit of Revenge, to watch the events that will lead to Balthazar's death. Those events are put in motion by Andrea's former lover Bel-imperia, who falls in love with Horatio and rejects the smitten Balthazar. Lorenzo and Balthazar then conspire to kill Horatio, whose death devastates Hieronimo. Bel-imperia is imprisoned by Lorenzo to cover up the crime, but sends a letter written in her own blood to Hieronimo, exposing Lorenzo's schemes. During a climactic play-within-a-play, Hieronimo and Bel-imperia take vengeance by stabbing Lorenzo and Balthazar, and subsequently kill themselves. The Spanish Tragedy is noted for its influence on the works of Shakespeare, especially the incriminating play-within-a-play in Hamlet.
Another epic greek poem written by Virgil, which describes the surviving Trojans fleeing from the ashes of their city and looking for a new place to settle, one that will eventually become Rome.
Aeneid
The Jew of Malta (Christopher Marlowe, c. 1589)
After his massive fortune is seized by Malta's governor, Ferneze, to pay tribute to the Turks, the Jewish merchant Barabas embarks on a complex journey of revenge. Barabas uses his daughter Abigail to spark a jealous feud that leads to a duel in which the governor's son Lodowick is killed. Abigail then hides in a convent and converts to Christianity, leading Barabas and his slave Ithamore to poison all of the convent's occupants. Barabas eventually aids the Turks in conquering Malta, for which he is appointed governor, but betrays the Turks in favor of the Maltese, who kill Barabas in a boiling cauldron as they retake the island. The Jew of Malta is thought to have influenced Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.
Aida (Giuseppe Verdi, Antonio Ghislanzoni, 1871)
Aida is an Ethiopian princess who is held captive in Egypt. She falls in love with the Egyptian general Radamès and convinces him to run away with her; unfortunately, he is caught by the high priest Ramphis and a jealous Egyptian princess, Amneris. Radamès is buried alive, but finds that Aida has snuck into the tomb to join him.Carmen (Georges Bizet, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, 1875)
Cry the Beloved Country
Alan Paton
The Plague, The Stranger
Albert Camus
The Stranger
Albert Camus
Antic Hay, Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
BRAVE NEW WORLD
Aldous Huxley
POINT COUNTER POINT
Aldous Huxley
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, The Color Purple
Alice Walker
A Charles Lutwidge Dodgson novel, written under the name Lewis Carroll, which describes the adventures of a girl who falls down a rabbit hole.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
A Erich Maria Remarque novel that tells of a German soldier who join the military and join the Western Front of World War 2. The battles fought have no meaning, as the land is always lost. The soldiers are old and lifeless. When they come home they feel disconnected. They are all dying off one by one.
All Quiet on the Western Front
A Robert Penn Warren novel. It follows the dramatic political rise of cynical populist southern governor.
All the King's Men
Bertram, Cont of Tousillon, Helena
All's Well That Ends Well
Advise and Consent
Allen Drury
Reality Sandwiches, Howl and Other Poems, Kaddish and Other Poems
Allen Ginsberg
Paris (sometimes called Alexander)
Also the son of Priam and Hecuba, he is destined to be the ruin of his country. He fulfills this destiny by accepting a bribe when asked to judge which of three goddesses is the fairest. When he awards Aphrodite the golden apple, Aphrodite repays him by granting him the most beautiful woman in the world; unfortunately, Helen is already married to Menelaus. Known less for hand-to-hand fighting than for mastery of his bow, he kills Achilles with an arrow but dies by the poisoned arrows of Philoctetes.
Amon
Amon began as a local god of Thebes, governing the air, fertility, and reproduction. His wife was Mut, and his son was Khon. Later, Amon became linked with the sun god Ra, and the two combined as Amon-Ra. In this form, he became worshipped beyond Egypt, and identified with Zeus and Jupiter. His appearance in art was as a man in a loincloth, with a headdress topped by feathers, but other appearances show him with the head of a ram. The temple of Amon-Ra at Karnak was the largest ever built.
The Bet (1889) by Anton Chekhov
An old banker recalls a bet that he made 15 years ago at a party, in response to an argument about whether capital punishment is more or less cruel than life in prison. A lawyer suggests that life in prison is superior, because it would be better to have some existence than none at all. The rash banker bets two million roubles that the lawyer would not last five years in solitary confinement; the lawyer insists he could withstand 15 years, and the bet is on. The lawyer is often unhappy during the early years of his confinement in a lodge on the banker's estate. However, the lawyer betters himself by refusing wine and tobacco, and gradually studies languages, history, literature, philosophy, the Bible, theology, and science. Meanwhile, the banker grows steadily poorer, and realizes that paying off the bet will leave him bankrupt. On the last day of the bet, the banker resolves to kill the lawyer, and sneaks into the lodge while the lawyer is sleeping. There, the banker finds a letter in which the lawyer explains that years of study have taught him to scorn earthly knowledge and riches, and to care only about the salvation of his soul. The lawyer thus plans to leave the lodge five hours before 12 o'clock on November 14, 1885, when he would have won the bet. The banker departs without doing the lawyer harm and the lawyer carries out his plan, allowing the banker to avoid ruin. The banker then hides the lawyer's note in a safe, to avoid "unnecessary talk."
The King and I (Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, 1951)
Anna Leonowens, a British schoolteacher, travels to Siam (now Thailand) to teach English to the King's many children and wives. Anna's western ways, the looming threat of British rule, and romance between Lun Tha and the concubine Tuptim all weigh heavily on the traditional, chauvinistic King. As the King dies, Anna kneels at his side, and the prince abolishes the practice of kowtowing. Adapted from Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon and inspired by Anna Leonowens' memoirs, it was made into an Academy Award-winning 1956 film starring Yul Brynner. Its songs include "I Whistle a Happy Tune," "Getting to Know You," and "Shall We Dance?"
A Sophocles play that is a sequel to Oedipus. Follows his daughter, the character, and her effort in the civil war between her brothers, she tries to stop them, but ends up dying as her brothers lose it all.
Antigone
The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
A Study in Scarlet
Arthur Conan Doyle
DARKNESS AT NOON
Arthur Koestler
Darkness at Noon
Arthur Koestler
The Crucible, Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller
A William Faulkner novel. It describes how a woman died, and as she died, she made her family promise to bury her in her hometown. It describes how the now dysfunctional family stays together just long enough to bury her.
As I Lay Dying
A William Shakespeare play. A duke has been kicked out of his throne and usurped. His daughter stays, but is also kicked out. They try to get their place back.
As You Like It
Oliver, Orlando, Duke Frederick, Rosalind, Jaques
As You Like It
Miguel Asturias (1899-1974, Guatemala; Nobel 1967)
Asturias left his native Guatemala in 1923 to study in Paris. There he discovered Mayan mythology, and translated the Popol Vuh into Spanish; the theme would pervade his work, such as 1963's Mulata de tal. He most famous novel, El señor presidente (1946), was a satire against the oppressive Guatalemalan dictatorship. Asturias also completed a trilogy that blasted exploitation by the American-led United Fruit Company, and the short-story collection Weekend in Guatemala (1956), based on the CIA-led overthrow of president Jacobo Arbenz's liberal government.
The Phantom of the Opera (Andrew Lloyd Webber; Charles Hart & Richard Stilgoe; Richard Stilgoe & Andrew Lloyd Webber; 1986)
At the Paris Opera in 1881, the mysterious Phantom lures the soprano Christine Daaé to his lair ("The Music of the Night"). Christine falls in love with the opera's new patron, Raoul, so the Phantom drops a chandelier and kidnaps Christine. They kiss, but he disappears, leaving behind only his white mask. Adapted from the 1909 novel of the same name by Gaston Leroux, it is the longest-running show in Broadway history.
The Scarlet Pimpernel
Baroness Orczy
The Fixer
Bernard Malamud
The Fixer, The Assistant, The Natural
Bernard Malamud
The Natural
Bernard Malamud
José Martí (1853-1895, Cuba)
Best known as a poet and a revolutionary, Martí fought tirelessly for Cuban independence. Imprisoned at age sixteen and exiled from the island several times, he settled in New York for the last fifteen years of his life, where he wrote essays on Walt Whitman, Jesse James, and the threat of Latin American economic dependence on the United States. His Ill-Omened Friendship (1885) is considered the first Spanish modernist novel, and his poetry collections include Our America and Simple Verses, which contains the poem "Guantanamera," the inspiration for several songs. Martí was killed in a skirmish at Dos Ríos while participating in an invasion with other Cuban exiles
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973, Chile; Nobel 1971)
Born Neftali Reyes, he adopted the surname of the 19th-century Czech poet Jan Neruda. Gabriela Mistral was the head of his school in the small city Temuco. In 1923 his best-known work, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, was published, which led to diplomatic appointments. As a penniless consul in Burma in the 1930s, he wrote the surrealist collection Residence on Earth. He served in the Chilean senate in the 1940s, though government opponents forced him into exile over his Communist views. Crossing the Andes on horseback inspired his epic Canto general (1950). He died of cancer days after his friend Salvador Allende was deposed.
The Kreutzer Sonata (1889) by Leo Tolstoy
Both Russia and the U.S. censored this novella, which describes the fatal results of an affair. As passengers on a train discuss marriage and love, a "nervous man" named Basile Posdnicheff breaks into the conversation, and insists that romantic love cannot endure for a lifetime. Posdnicheff recalls the dissipations of his bachelor days before explaining how he courted his wife, whom he accuses of trapping him into marriage with her physical charms. According to Posdnicheff, the idleness of the well-fed upper classes leads to an unhealthy emphasis on romance, giving women power over men. He advocates the ideal of celibacy even in marriage, astonishing the other train passengers. Posdnicheff describes quarrels with his wife, complaining that she was overly concerned with the health of their children, and that she eventually used contraception. As the marriage grows intolerable, Posdnifcheff's wife spends more time playing the piano, and is introduced by Posdnicheff to Troukhatchevsky, who studied the violin in Paris. Although Posdnicheff is initially suspicious of Troukhatchevsky, he is comforted by his wife's disavowal of interest in the musician, and by the elevated emotions he feels while listening to his wife and Troukhatchevsky play Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata. However, Posdnicheff's jealousy returns during a work trip, when he receives a letter from his wife mentioning Troukhatchevsky. He takes a long journey back to his house, where he finds Troukhatchevsky's overcoat. Posdnicheff removes his shoes to walk more quietly, takes a dagger from the wall, and surprises the pair in the dining room. Because he does not wish to run after Troukhatchevsky without shoes, Posdnicheff turns on his wife, and fatally stabs her. Although jailed while awaiting trial, Posdnicheff is ultimately acquitted because of his wife's suspected infidelity.
The African Queen, Horatio Hornblower
C.S. Forester
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis
A novel written by Voltaire, following the main character as he faces hardship after hardship until he finally gives up. Really weird, and French.
Candide
Carmen (Georges Bizet, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, 1875)
Carmen is a young gypsy who works in a cigarette factory in Seville. She is arrested by the corporal Don José for fighting, but cajoles him into letting her escape. They meet again at an inn where she tempts him into challenging his captain; that treason forces him to join a group of smugglers. In the final act, the ragtag former soldier encounters Carmen at a bullfight where her lover Escamillo is competing (the source of the "Toreador Song") and stabs her. The libretto was based on a novel by Prosper Merimée.
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER
Carson McCullers
A Tennessee Williams play. It follows a troubled Southern family on their patriarch's birthday, where everyone but the patriarch and his wife know that he is dying of cancer. There is a large web of deceit that is slowly unravelled as the story goes on.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
A satirical novel by Joseph Heller. A young man is drafted into the army, and after a while joins his unit during bombing runs in World War 2. Him and his teammates are forever trying to achieve the number of runs they need to leave, which keeps on being moved up higher to keep the men there.
Catch 22
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Hard Times
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens
The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Little Dorrit, The Pickwick Papers, Martin Chuzzlewit, Bleak House, The Old Curiosity Shop
Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers
Charles Dickens
Westward Ho!, The Water Babies
Charles Kingsley
Mutiny on the Bounty
Charles Nordoff and James Hall
True Grit
Charles Portis
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte
Evita (Andrew Lloyd Webber; Tim Rice; Tim Rice; 1978)
Che (possibly Che Guevara, but it's also South American slang for just "a guy") narrates the life story of Eva "Evita" Perón, a singer and actress who marries Juan Perón. Juan becomes President of Argentina, and Eva's charity work makes her immensely popular among her people ("Don't Cry for Me Argentina") before her death from cancer. It was made into a 1996 film starring Madonna and Antonio Banderas.
Mommie Dearest
Christina Crawford
Come Live with me and be my love, Tamburlaine the Great, Edward the II, Dr. Faustus
Christopher Marlowe
The Night Before Christmas
Clement Clarke Moore
SONS AND LOVERS
D.H. Lawrence
THE RAINBOW
D.H. Lawrence
Journal of the Plague Year, Moll Flanders, Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe
Divine Comedy
Dante
The Inferno
Dante
The Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise)
Dante Alighieri
Rebecca
Daphne Du Maurier
A Charles Dickens novel which is the biography of a fictional character, (who happens to share the name of a magician of today) which many people consider to be a veiled autobiography of his own life.
David Copperfield
"Concerned" philosophical works
David Hume wrote An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, George Berkeley wrote Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, and John Locke wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
A play written by Arthur Miller. He is a failed salesman though he tries, and his boss doesn't give him the money he needs. He concocts a plan to make his family successful and rich by dying in an accident and giving his son the money, though they protest, he has a series of hallucinations and goes through with it.
Death of a Salesman
A collection of novellas by french Giovanni Boccaccio. The frame story is about a group of characters flee the black death and find each other, and tell each other stories till you reach one hundred.
Decameron
Don Giovanni (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lorenzo Da Ponte, 1787)
Don Giovanni (the Italian form of "Don Juan") attempts to seduce Donna Anna, but is discovered by her father, the Commendatore, whom he kills in a swordfight. Later in the act, his servant Leporello recounts his master's 2,000-odd conquests in the "Catalogue Aria." Further swordfights and assignations occur prior to the final scene, in which a statue of the Commendatore comes to life, knocks on the door to the room in which Don Giovanni is feasting, and then opens a chasm that takes him down to hell.
A novel written by Miguel Cervantes Saavedra, describes the adventures of a bibliophile who decides to be a hero. After some disasters he takes on his name and gets a sidekick, Sancho Panza, to go on his adventures.
Don Quixote
All for Love (or, the World Well Lost) (John Dryden, 1677)
Dryden wrote that he "professed to imitate the divine Shakespeare" in this play, which retells the story of the Roman leader Mark Antony and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. In Dryden's version of the tale, the Roman general Ventidius actively tries to separate the two lovers, and encourages Antony to believe that Cleopatra has been secretly consorting with the Roman Dolabella. Another of the central characters in Dryden's play is Antony's wife Octavia, who travels to Alexandria to convince Antony to reconcile. At the end of the play, the eunuch Alexas falsely tells Antony that Cleopatra has committed suicide. Antony falls upon his sword, and the grief-stricken Cleopatra lets herself be bitten by a poisonous snake. The dead lovers are then eulogized by Serapion, a priest of Isis.
Fern Hill, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Dylan Thomas
Spoon River Anthology
Edgar Lee Masters
Tarzan of the Apes
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
Edith Wharton
Giant, So Big, Snowboat
Edna Ferber
My Candle Burns at Both Ends, The Harp Weaver and Other Poems, Renascence and Other Poems, A Few Figs from Thistles
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Rienzi, The Last Days of Pompeii
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The Man Without a Country
Edward Everett Hale
The Man Against the Sky, Lucinda Matlock, Richard Cory, Miniver Cheevy
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Sonnets from the Portuguese
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
THE DEATH OF THE HEART
Elizabeth Bowen
Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte
Apparently with No Suprise, Because I Could Not Stop For Death, I heard a Fly Buzz When I Died
Emily Dickinson
National Velvet
Enid Bagnold
Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
Ernest Gaines
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway
Hills Like White Elephants, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, Big Two-Hearted River, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, In Our Time
Ernest Hemingway
THE SUN ALSO RISES
Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway
God's Little Acre, Tobacco Road
Erskine Caldwell
TOBACCO ROAD
Erskine Caldwell
The Mysteries of Paris, The Wandering Jew
Eugene Sue
Orestes, Alcestis, Medea, Electra
Euripides
BRIDESHEAD REVISITED
Evelyn Waugh
Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh
SCOOP
Evelyn Waugh
Another Hemingway novel. It describes the brutality of Spain during the Spanish Civil War.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Dune
Frank Herbert
Epic of Wheat trilogy
Frank Norris
McTeague, The Octopus
Frank Norris
A novel written by Mary Shelley, about a man who creates a monster named after him by attempting to resurrect a dead man.
Frankenstein
Old Yeller
Fred Gipson
The Pirates of Penzance (W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, 1879)
Frederic, having turned 21, is released from his apprenticeship to the title pirates. Reaching shore for the first time, Frederic falls in love with Mabel, the daughter of Major-General Stanley. Frederic realizes that he was apprenticed until his twenty-first birthday, and, having been born on February 29, he must return to his apprenticeship. Mabel vows to wait for him. The Major-General and the police pursue the pirates, who surrender. The pirates are forgiven, and Mabel and Frederic reunite. As the work is actually a light opera, most of the songs are simply titled after their first lines; the most memorable ones include "Pour, oh pour, the pirate sherry" and the patter song "I am the very model of a modern Major-General."
Androcles and the Lion, Caesar and Cleopatra, The Devil's Disciple, Major Barbara, Arms and the Man, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Saint Joan, Man and Superman
George Bernard Shaw
Middlemarch, Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede
George Elliot
The Ordeal of Richard Feveral, The Egoist, Modern Love
George Meredith
1984
George Orwell
ANIMAL FARM
George Orwell
Animal Farm
George Orwell
Shooting an Elephant
George Orwell
The Last Puritan
George Santayana
Burr, Lincoln
Gore Vidal
A Charles Dickens novel. Follows a 7 year old orphan named Pip who is scared by a convict into getting him food. It follows Pip as he tries to be successful.
Great Expectations
A drama written by William Shakespeare, this play revolves around a royal family in Denmark, where the lead character's father, who shares his name, is killed by his uncle. The drama is based on the lead character's quest for revenge.
Hamlet
Endo Shusaku (1923-1996)
He converted to Catholicism at the age of 11, and majored in French literature. His first works, White Man and Yellow Man, explored the differences between Japanese and Western values and national experiences. Silence tells of the martyrdom of the Catholic converts of Portuguese priests. The Samurai recounts the tale of a samurai sent to establish trade relations between his shogun and Mexico, Spain, and Rome. The latter two novels are generally considered to be Shusaku's greatest achievements.
Loki
He's actually giant-kin, but lives with the Aesir and is Odin's blood-brother. The god of fire and trickery, his many pranks include duping Hoder into killing Balder. His children include the wolf Fenrir, the Midgard Serpent Jormungandr, Hel (the ruler of the underworld), and Sleipnir. After killing Balder he was chained to three boulders with snakes dripping poison onto him
A novella by Joseph Conrad that tells of Charles Marlow, an ivory trader who through the novella describes how and why he decided to become a boater of the Congo.
Heart of Darkness
Walden
Henry David Thoreau
LOVING
Henry Green
Prince Hal, Falstaff, Owen Glendover, Henry Percy, Mistress Quickly
Henry IV (Parts I, II)
Daisy Miller
Henry James
THE AMBASSADORS
Henry James
THE GOLDEN BOWL
Henry James
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE
Henry James
The Ambassadors
Henry James
The American
Henry James
The Bostonian
Henry James
The Bostonians, The American, The Ambassadors, The Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of the Dove, Washington Square, Art of the Novel
Henry James
The Golden Bowl
Henry James
The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James
The Turn of the Screw
Henry James
TROPIC OF CANCER
Henry Miller
King Charles VI of France, Montjoy, Princess Katherine
Henry V
Queen Margaret, The Duke of York, Edward IV, Richard III
Henry VI (Parts I, II, III)
Cardinal Wolsey, Queen Katharine, Anne Boleyn, Thomas Cranmer
Henry VIII
Tales of a Wayside Inn, The Village Blacksmith, Paul Rever's Ride, Evangeline, The Courtship of Miles Standish
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Billy Budd
Herman Melville
Moby Dick
Herman Melville
Marjorie Morningstar, War and Rememberance, The Winds of the War, The Caine Mutiny
Herman Wouk
The Caine Mutiny
Herman Wouk
War and Remembrance
Herman Wouk
UNDER THE NET
Iris Murdoch
Gimpel the Fool
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Seven Gothic Tales, Out of Africa
Isak Dinesen
Isis
Isis, daughter of Geb and Nut, protected love, motherhood, and fate in the Egyptian mythos. Many of her roles are similar to those of the goddess Hathor, but she is often equated with the Greek Demeter. Her powers were gained through tricking the god Ra. By placing a snake in his path, which poisoned him, she forced him to give some power to her before she would cure him
A Sir Walter Scott novel. A story of a night trying to unite with his love.
Ivanhoe
THE GINGER MAN
J.P. Donleavy
Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkein
The Simarillion
J.R.R. Tolkien
Mexico City Blues, The Dharma Blues
Jack Kerouac
The Call of the Wild
Jack London
GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN
James Baldwin
Go Tell It on the Mountain
James Baldwin
If Beale Street Could Talk, Go Tell It on the Mountain
James Baldwin
Life of Johnson
James Boswell
Tai-Pan, Noble House, Shogun
James Clavell
Taipan
James Clavell
The Pathfinder
James Fenimore Cooper
The Pioneers, The Deerslayer, The Pathfinder, the Praire, The Last of the Mohicans, the Pilot
James Fenimore Cooper
FROM HERE TO ETERNITY
James Jones
From Here to Eternity
James Jones
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN
James Joyce
Dubliners, Finnegan's Wake
James Joyce
FINNEGANS WAKE
James Joyce
Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice
James M. Cain
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
James M. Cain
Tales of the South Pacific
James Michener
THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY
James T. Farrell
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
James Thurber
Northanger Abbey, Emma, Mansfield Park
Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
A Charlotte Bronte novel in which a woman goes through various hardships in her life, facing abusive guardians, and oppressive environment, and hard times, until she is finally happy when she gets with the man she loves.
Jane Eyre
Uncle Remus
Joel Chandler Harris
William Tell
Johann Christoph Von Schiller
U.S.A. (trilogy)
John Dos Passos
U.S.A. trilogy
John Dos Passos
THE MAGUS
John Fowles
End of the Chapter, A Modern Comedy, The Forsyte Saga
John Galsworthy
Grendel
John Gardner
Barbara Frietchie, Snow-bound
John Greenleaf Whittier
A Bell for Adano
John Hersey
The Cider House Rules
John Irving
The World According to Garp
John Irving
Hyperion, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Endymion, Ode to a Nightingale
John Keats
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole
A Separate Peace
John Knowles
Riders to the Sea, Playboy of the Western World
John Millington Synge
When I Consider How My Light is Spent, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, Il Penseroso, L'Allegro, Comus, Lycidas
John Milton
APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA
John O'Hara
Cannery Row
John Steinbeck
East of Eden
John Steinbeck
Of mice and men
John Steinbeck
THE GRAPES OF WRATH
John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
The Pearl
John Steinbeck
The Winter of Our Discontent
John Steinbeck
Tortilla Flat
John Steinbeck
Travels With Charley, East of Eden, Cannery Row, The Winter of Our Discontent, Tortilla Flat
John Steinbeck
Rabbit is Rich
John Updike
The Witches of Eastwick, Rabbit Run, Rabbit is Rich
John Updike
The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi
John Webster
LORD JIM
Joseph Conrad
NOSTROMO
Joseph Conrad
THE SECRET AGENT
Joseph Conrad
The Secret Sharer, Nostromo, The ****** of Narcissus, Lord Jim
Joseph Conrad
CATCH-22
Joseph Heller
Catch-22
Joseph Heller
Good as Gold, Something Happened
Joseph Heller
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
Judy Blume
Around the World in 80 Days
Jules Verne
Five Weeks in a Balloon, From the Earth of the Moon
Jules Verne
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Jules Verne
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Verne
Casca, Brutus, Cassius
Julius Caesar
A Shakespeare play following the story of a Roman general turned emperor, starting when he returns to Rome in a triumphant parade after a successful campaign, and ends with his assassination by his friends, when he was stabbed 23 different times.
Julius Ceaser
The Awakening, The Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin
Ship of Fools, Flowering Judas
Katherine Anne Porter
Mordred
King Arthur's illegitimate son by his half-sister Morgause (they were unaware of their shared parentage), possibly making him the rightful heir to Camelot. Mordred is best known as a traitorous figure who crowns himself King of the Britons while King Arthur is in Gaul fighting the mythical Emperor Lucius of Rome. Mordred is also frequently linked with Queen Guinevere: some accounts say that he reported the queen's affair with Lancelot to Arthur, some say that Mordred took Guinevere as a concubine during his usurpation of Arthur's throne, and some say that Mordred's wife was Guinevere's sister Gwenhwyfach. Arthur killed Mordred at the Battle of Camlann.
Goneril, Regan, Cordelia, The Earl of Kent, The Earl of Gloucester, Edgar, Edmund
King Lear
Sir Gawain
Knight of the Round Table and the son of Morgause and King Lot of Orkney, making him the nephew of King Arthur. He is the hero of the Pearl Poet's 14th-century romantic epic Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which Gawain's loyalty and resolve are tested by the title Green Knight (secretly Lord Bertilak), who survives his beheading at the hands of Gawain and returns a year later to return the favor. Gawain's brothers Gareth and Gaheris are killed during Lancelot's rescue of Queen Guinevere, sending Gawain into a frenzy.
Sir Galahad
Knight of the Round Table renowned for his purity and honor. Galahad is the illegitimate son of Sir Lancelot and King Pelles's daughter Lady Elaine of Corbenic. Sir Galahad is the only member of Arthur's corps who can sit in the Siege Perilous, a seat at the Round Table set aside by Merlin for the knight who would complete the quest for the Holy Grail. Galahad's quest for the Holy Grail, which he completed alongside Sir Percival and Sir Bors, ended when he encountered the Fisher King, who asked him to take the chalice to Sarras. Galahad is supposedly descended from the brother-in-law of Joseph of Arimathea, who later visits him and allows him to ascend to Heaven
Sir Percival
Knight of the Round Table who accompanies Sir Galahad and Sir Bors on the successful quest for the Holy Grail. Percival is one of the sons of King Pellinore. He was raised in the woods by his (unnamed) mother until he turned 15. Although Percival fails to identify the Holy Grail during an early encounter with the wounded Fisher King that involved a bleeding lance, he later heals the Fisher King's wound at the end of the quest. In some stories, Percival loves a woman named Blanchefleur, and he is named as the father of Lohengrin in many Germanic sources
A poem written by Coleridge following the life of an influential mongol leader whom the Polos had interactions with.
Kublai Khan
Cat's Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut
Deadeye Dick, Player Piano, Cat's Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE
Kurt Vonnegut
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
L. Frank Baum
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry
THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET
Lawrence Durell
A poetry collection of stories by Walter Whitman. It has a lot of famous essays and poems in it.
Leaves of Grass
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolston
The Shame of the Cities
Lincoln Steffans
A Louisa May Alcott novel. Follows 4 sisters and their lives. When one of them dies, they all change. Eventually they all grow up and move away to build their own houses.
Little Women
A Vladmir Nabokov novel. It follows a pedofile. He finds a girl he loves and kidnaps her. She gets kidnaped. She escapes and is happy. He finds her and kills her husband. He goes to jail and is awaiting death.
Lolita
A novel by Edward Rutherfurd, it charts the history of London from 54 BC to 1997, with a character from the early era starting a family that appears all throughout the book.
London
Crossing the Bar, The Lady of Shalott, Idylls of the King, The Princess, Charge of the Light Brigade, The Lotus-Eaters, In Memorian A.H.H
Lord Alfred Tennyson
A novel by William Golding. A play crash lands on an island and the boys try to create a society, which soon falls apart into savagery.
Lord of the Flies
Little Men
Louisa May Alcott
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
Little Women, Little Men
Louisa May Alcott
Ferdinand
Love's Labour's Lost
Anne of Avonlea, Anne of Green Gables
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Banquo, King Duncan, Malcolm, Conalbain, Macduff
Macbeth
Written by Gustav Flaubert. This novel follows Emma Bovary, a doctor's wife, who has a series of affairs in an attempt to escape her own boring life.
Madame Bovaryi
A Wrinkle in Time
Madeleine L'Engle
A hindu epic that centers around 5 brothers who are princes, Arjun, Nakul, Sahadev, Bheem, and Yudhishtir, as they reclaim their throne.
Mahabharata
A Sinclair Lewis Novel. Tells the story of a progressive woman who ends up in a super conservative and backwards town. She tries to reform it.
Main Street
UNDER THE VOLCANO
Malcolm Lowry
Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell
The Sound of Music (Richard Rodgers; Oscar Hammerstein II; Howard Lindsey & Russel Crouse; 1959)
Maria, a young woman studying to be a nun in Nazi-occupied Austria, becomes governess to the seven children of Captain von Trapp. She teaches the children to sing ("My Favorite Things," "Do-Re-Mi"), and she and the Captain fall in love and get married. After Maria and the von Trapps give a concert for the Nazis ("Edelweiss"), they escape Austria ("Climb Ev'ry Mountain"). It was adapted into an Academy Award-winning 1965 film starring Julie Andrews
Innocents Abroad, The Gilded Age, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calveras County
Mark Twain
The Prince and the Pauper
Mark Twain
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
Frankenstein
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Where the Wild Things Are
Maurice Sendak
ZULEIKA DOBSON
Max Beerbohm
Mother
Maxim Gorky
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou
Vincentio, Angelo, Claudio, Juliet, Isabella
Measure for Measure
Jurassic Park
Michael Crichton
The Andromeda Strain
Michael Crichton
The Killer Angels
Michael Shaara
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera
A novel written by Herman Melville, this book revolves around a man, Ishmael, who joins a voyage led by Captain Ahab on a mission to hunt a whale that stole his leg.
Moby-Dick
Willa Cather novel which follows an orphan who goes to a farm to work with his grandparents. It shows them hit hard times and how they get over it with the help of their daughters.
My Antonia
Tanglewood Tales
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Birth-Mark, Young Goodman Brown, Tanglewood Tales, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
I Ought to Be in Pictures, Broadway Bound, Lost in Yonkers, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, The Sunshine Boys, The Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park
Neil Simon
Nevsky Prospekt (1835) by Nikolai Gogol
Nevsky Prospekt is a major thoroughfare in Saint Petersburg. After describing the various types of people who walk down the street at different times of day, the story focuses on two men, who each pursue a beautiful woman. The first is Piskaryov, a painter who sees a dark-haired woman, follows her to the brothel where she works, and falls obsessively in love with her, eventually turning to opium to calm himself. He returns and proposes to the woman, but she mocks his advances, after which Piskaryov cuts his own throat. The second man, Lieutenant Pirogov, follows a blond woman. She turns out to be the wife of a German tinsmith, who beats Pirogov. The lieutenant plans to avenge himself, but abandons the idea after eating pastries and going dancing.
The Prince
Niccolo Machiavelli
A Jean-Paul Sartre play that follows 3 people who are led into a room in hell. They are very confused and try to escape, but soon realize that other people are hell, and that they are locked together for all of eternity though they hate each other.
No Exit
An American Dream, The Armies of the Night, The Naked and the Dead, The Executioner's Song
Norman Mailer
A Willa Cather novel about a family on a failing farm. As the dad dies he makes the family promise to stay on the farm. They hit more hard times, but the sister and mom convince them to persevere, and they become prosperous.
O Pioneers
A John Keats poem, an Ode, to an object.
Ode on a Grecian Urn
A Schiller poem, one that is quite popular, and an ode to a happy emotion.
Ode to Joy
A Charles Dickens novel. Follows the story of how the title character was born into poverty. After being orphaned and mistreated by his guardians, he escapes only to fall in with street urchins who trick him, led by an infamous jewish criminal known as Fagin.
Oliver Twist
The Rubaiyat
Omar Khayyam
The Nose (1836) by Nikolai Gogol
On the morning of March 25, the barber Yakovlevich cuts open a loaf of bread, and discovers a nose inside it. The nose belongs to Major Kovalyov, who wakes up the same day to find a smooth patch of skin where his nose used to be. Upon encountering his missing nose, which is traveling in a carriage and wearing the uniform of a state councillor, Kovalyov chases it to a shopping center called the Gostiny Dvor. There, Kovalyov wonders how to approach the nose, since its uniform indicates that it has a higher status than him. Summoning his courage, Kovalyov tries to convince the nose to return to his face, but the nose claims not to recognize him. Kovalyov goes to a newspaper, intending to offer a reward for the nose's return, but the clerk refuses his absurd-sounding request. Kovalyov then speaks with the police, who later catch the nose attempting to flee to Riga. However, the doctor that Kovalyov consults is unable to re-attach the nose, even with an operation. Kovalyov writes a letter to Madame Alexandra Podtochina Grigorievna, accusing her of cursing him so that he will marry her daughter, but receives an uncomprehending reply. Finally, on April 7, Kovalyov wakes up with his nose reattached, and resumes his normal life.
A series of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus, tells of how Agamemnon returns home after the Trojan War and gets killed by his wife and her lover. Their son avenges his father by killing them. Then he must get Athena's help to get the Furies of him.
Oresteia
De Profundis, Ballad of Reading Gaol, A Woman of No Importance, Salome, Lady Windermere's Fan, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde
The family quarrel of Osiris and Set
Osiris took Isis, his sister, for his wife, and ruled over the earth. Set grew jealous of his brother and killed him, afterwards cutting his body into 14 pieces and hiding them in various places around Egypt. He then claimed kingship over the land. Isis searched the breadth of the land until she had recovered all of the pieces and, with the help of Anubis, embalmed the body. She conceived a son, Horus, by the (still dead) Osiris, then resurrected him. Horus defeated Set to regain the kingship, and all subsequent pharaohs were said to be aspects of him.
An epic poem written by John Milton, describes the biblical story of the fall of man, told from the perspectives of Adam and Eve, and Satan.
Paradise Lost
Ra
Personification of the midday sun, he was also venerated as Atum (setting sun) and Khepri (rising sun), which were later combined with him. He traveled across the sky each day and then each night, the monster Apep would attempt to prevent his return. Other myths held that Ra spent the night in the underworld consoling the dead. The god of the pharaohs, from the fourth dynasty onward all pharaohs termed themselves "sons of Ra," and after death they joined his entourage. He was portrayed with the head of a falcon, and crowned with the sun disk.
A John Bunyan novel. The entire book is a dream sequence.
Pilgrims Progress
Symposium, Phaedrus
Plato
Concord Hymm, The Divinity School Address, The American Scholar, Nature
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dandelion Wine
Ray Bradbury
The Overcoat (1842) by Nikolai Gogol
Remarking on the story's importance to Russian literature, Fyodor Dostoyevsky quipped "we all come out of Gogol's overcoat." The story's protagonist is Akaky Akakievich, a poor government clerk whose only joy in life is copying documents. His coworkers often make fun of his worn-out overcoat, so he visits his tailor Petrovich, who says that the coat must be replaced. Akaky scrimps to save up the necessary 80 roubles, and finally acquires the coat after receiving an unexpectedly large bonus. As he walks home from a party that was given in part to honor the new garment, Akaky is accosted by two ruffians who steal his overcoat. Akaky tries to seek justice from the municipal superintendent and from an "important personage," but both refuse to help him. Soon afterwards, Akaky contracts a fever and dies. His ghost is said to haunt the streets of Saint Petersburg, searching for the stolen cloak. Eventually, the "important personage" is accosted by a figure whom he believes to be Akaky's ghost, and is forced to surrender his own coat. However, the story's final words hint that the supposed "ghost" was actually an ordinary robber.
Rent (Jonathan Larson, 1996)
Rent tells the story of impoverished artists ("bohemians") living in the East Village of New York City during the AIDS crisis circa 1990 (though the temporal references are inconsistent, so no specific year can be pinned down). It is narrated by the filmmaker Mark Cohen, whose ex-girlfriend Maureen just left him for a woman (Joanne), and whose recovering-heroin-addict roommate Roger meets the dying stripper (and fellow heroin addict) Mimi. Mark and Roger's former roommate, the itinerant philosopher and hacker Collins comes to town, where he is robbed, then saved by the transvestite Angel, with whom he moves in. Meanwhile, the former fourth roommate of Mark, Roger, and Collins — Benny — has married into a wealthy family and bought the building Mark and Roger now live in, from which he wants to evict them. The title refers to both the rent money that Mark and Roger cannot and will not pay Benny, and to their community being rent apart (torn) by the AIDS epidemic, poverty, and drug addiction. Rent is an adaptation of Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème (with most characters corresponding directly, e.g. Mark to Marcello). It won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and is most famous for the songs "Seasons of Love" and "La Vie Bohème".
West Side Story (Leonard Bernstein; Stephen Sondheim; Arthur Laurents; 1957)
Riff and Bernardo lead two rival gangs: the blue-collar Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks. Tony, a former Jet, falls in love with Bernardo's sister Maria and vows to stop the fighting, but he kills Bernardo after Bernardo kills Riff in a "rumble." Maria's suitor Chino shoots Tony, and the two gangs come together. Notable songs include "America," "Tonight," "Somewhere," "I Feel Pretty," and "Gee, Officer Krupke." Adapted from Romeo and Juliet, it was made into an Academy Award-winning 1961 film starring Natalie Wood
A short story written by Washington Irving following the adventures of a Dutch American living in a village, he follows a man up a mountain to discover ghosts playing ninepin. He joins them and falls asleep, only waking up 24 years later.
Rip van Winkle
Death of a Hired Man, Birches, Mending Wall, The Gift Outright
Robert Frost
I, CLAUDIUS
Robert Graves
ALL THE KING'S MEN
Robert Penn Warren
All the King's Men
Robert Penn Warren
World Enough and Time, All The King's Men
Robert Penn Warren
Idiot's Delight, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, The Petrified Forest
Robert Sherwood
A novel written by Daniel Defoe, a British man goes on a ship, which is wrecked during a storm. He's the only survivor of the crew and becomes a castaway, soon to acquire his servant Friday.
Robinson Crusoe
A famous Shakespeare romance in which the villain is insulted as the "King of Cats" as two star crossed lovers try to convince their rival families to allow them to marry.
Romeo and Juliet
Friar Lawrence, Tybalt, Mercutio
Romeo and Juliet
Biographia Literaria, Christabel, The Rime of Ancient Mariner
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow
A Jane Austen novel that focuses on two sisters ready to marry. It shows the 2 women go to their meager new home with their widowed mother, as they try to survive with the meager amount they have left and get married.
Sense and Sensibility
Thoth
Serving the gods as the supreme scribe, the ibis-headed Thoth was known as the "tongue of Ptah" for his knowledge of hieroglyphics, and as the "Heart of Re" for his creative powers. His knowledge of science and calculation made him the creator of the calendar, and his symbol was the moon due to his knowledge of how to calculate its path. His knowledge of magic led to his association with the Greek Hermes. Thoth was consulted by Isis when attempting to resurrect Osiris, and was again consulted when the young Horus was stung by a scorpion.
Every Man in His Humour (Ben Jonson, 1598)
Set in Jonson's contemporary London, this comedy is a "humours play," in which each character is a stock type governed by a corresponding "humour" (as theorized in Greek medicine). The plot chiefly concerns Knowell, an old gentleman who worries that his son Edward is becoming too involved with Wellbred, a fun-loving gallant Londoner. Knowell secretly follows his son to London; meanwhile, Wellbred's brother-in-law, the merchant Kitely, worries that Wellbred's behavior will give his business a bad reputation, all the while suspecting his own wife of infidelity. Various subplots involve Knowell's mischievous servant Brainworm, the braggart-captain Bobadill, and two friends of Wellbred who try to be fashionably and poetically melancholic. In the end, the kindly Justice Clement settles all of the grievances amassed over the course of the play. A follow-up, Every Man Out of His Humour, was written one year later.
The Little Foxes (Lillian Hellman, 1939)
Set on a plantation in 1900, Hellman attempts to show that by this time any notion of antebellum Southern gentility has been destroyed by modern capitalism and industrialism. Three Hubbard siblings (Regina and her two brothers) scheme to earn vast riches at the expense of other family members, such as Regina's husband Horace and their daughter Alexandra. The title is taken from the Old Testament Song of Solomon: "the little foxes that spoil the vines."
A Light in the Attic
Shel Silverstein
Where the Sidewalk Ends
Shel Silverstein
WINESBURG, OHIO
Sherwood Anderson
Winesberg, Ohio
Sherwood Anderson
Winesburg Ohio, Dark Laughter
Sherwood Anderson
Tale of the Genji
Shikibu Murasaki
The Red Badge of Courage
Stephen Crane
Western Star, John Brown's Body, The Devil and Daniel Webster
Stephen Vincent Benet
Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, 1979)
Sweeney Todd, a barber, returns to London from Australia, where the evil Judge Turpin — who lusted after Sweeney's wife — unjustly imprisoned him. Sweeney's daughter, Joanna, escapes Turpin — of whom she had been a ward during her father's incarceration — and falls in love with the sailor Anthony Hope. A vengeful Sweeney begins murdering his customers, and his neighbor, Mrs. Lovett, bakes them into meat pies. Sweeney kills the Judge but, in his fury, accidentally kills a mad beggar woman who was really his long-lost wife. Mrs. Lovett's shop boy, Tobias, grows scared and kills Sweeney. The show's famously complex score includes "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd," "The Worst Pies in London," "Johanna," and "God, That's Good,", but since the show is essentially sung-through, it is sometimes nontrivial to identify distinct songs within it
A novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky follows a family as try to solve a murder and abdicate one of their members.
The Brothers Karamazov
A collection of stories, in prose and verse, written by Geoffrey Chaucer set in olden times.
The Canterbury Tales
Aegeon, Antipholus, Dromio
The Comedy of Errors
A novel by John Steinbeck which follows a farmer family during the Great Depression as they are forced to pack up and leave, and how they get over their trials.
The Grapes of Wrath
A Thomas Mann novel. A decade before WW1, the main character tries to fight an illness and meets various notable characters while doing so.
The Magic Mountain
A Shakespeare play that follows a merchant and his dreams of pursuing a girl. After a series of debts end with 2 mens debts in the hands of an enemy, they try to trick him but fail. One of them gets arrested and is to be sentenced to death, but the wives of the men disguise themselves and save him.
The Merchant of Venice
Antonio, Shylock, Jessica, Portia, Bassanio
The Merchant of Venice
Sir John Falstaff
The Merry Wives of Windsor
A short story by Franz Kafka. It centers around a travelling salesman, who wakes up one day to realize he has become an insect. After realizing he is a burden to his family, he dies, so that they could live their dreams.
The Metamorphosis
The Mikado (Arthur Sullivan; W. S. Gilbert; 1885)
The Mikado (Emperor of Japan) has made flirting a capital crime in Titipu, so the people have appointed an ineffectual executioner named Ko-Ko. Ko-Ko's ward, Yum-Yum, marries the wandering musician Nanki-Poo, and the two lovers fake their execution. The Mikado visits the town and forgives the lovers of their transgression. It includes the song "Three Little Maids From School Are We."
A short novel written by Ernest Hemingway. It tells the story of an old, aging, fisherman Santiago and his fight with a Marlin. Santiago has been having a lot of bad luck and couldn't catch fish, but he believes he'll make it out.
The Old Man and the Sea
An Edgar Allen Poe poem where the title bird says nevermore over and over again as a man is devastated after the love of his life passes away.
The Raven
Katherine, Bianca, Petruchio
The Taming of the Shrew
A Shakespeare play around a remote island which the rightful Duke of Milan plots to instate his daughter on his stolen throne through a complicated plot in which he uses his sorcery skills.
The Tempest
Prospero, Miranda, Antonio, Ariel, Caliban, Ferdinand
The Tempest
A collection of stories of unknown authors, all set in Arabia, which explains their culture.
The Thousand and One Arabian Nights
A novel by Alexandre Dumas, follows the adventures of Porthos, Athos, and Ama
The Three Musketeers
Valentine, Proteus, Silvia, Julia
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
A William Blake poem. A poem following an animal, which is depicted as a fearsome beast which tears through jungles.
The Tyger
A long poem by T.S Elliot, which describes various different dark things.
The Waste Land
The Way of the World (William Congreve, 1700)
The Way of the World's complex plot (typical of Restoration comedy) concerns Mirabell and Millimant, two lovers who wish to marry. However, Millimant will lose "half her fortune" unless her choice of husband is approved by her aunt Lady Wishfort, who wants her to marry Sir Wilfull Witwoud. Mirabell enlists the married servants Waitwell and Foible to trick Lady Wishfort into falling in love with Sir Rowland, who is actually Waitwell in disguise, so that the compromised Lady Wishfort will be forced to agree to Mirabell and Millamant's marriage. The scheme is supported by Lady Wishfort's daughter, Mrs. Fainall, but exposed by a woman named Mrs. Marwood, who loves Mirabell. A resolution is reached when the rakish Mr. Fainall tries to blackmail his mother-in-law Lady Wishfort, who asks for Mirabell's help. Mirabell then produces an old contract that invalidates the blackmail attempt, securing Lady Wishfort's blessing for his marriage to Millamant.
Leontes, Hermione, Polixenes, Perdita, Florizel, Antigonus
The Winter's Tale
Ma'at
The daughter of Ra, she predated the universe and served over the creation of it, ensuring balance between everything. Primarily seen as the keeper of order, Ma'at was responsible for seasons, day and night, rainfall, and star movements. A symbolic offering of Ma'at, in the form a statuette was given to the gods, as Ma'at encompassed all other offerings. Ma'at's aspect as god of justice also showed through her role in death ritual, where her ostrich feather was weighed against the hearts of the dead in the underworld. Judges wore effigies of Ma'at, and the supreme head of courts was said to be the priest of Ma'at
Agamemnon
The king of Mycenae, Agamemnon shares supreme command of the Greek troops with his brother, Menelaus. An epithet of his, "king of heroes," reflects this status. As a commander, however, he often lacks good public relations skills, as shown by his feud with Achilles (book 1) and by his ill-considered strategy of suggesting that all the troops go home (book 2). Upon his return home, Agamemnon is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus.
Menelaus
The king of Sparta, Menelaus is the husband of Helen, the cause celebre of the war. He tries to win Helen back by fighting Paris in single combat, but Aphrodite carried Paris off when it seemed that Menelaus would win. Despite his notionally equal say in commanding the troops with his brother Agamemnon, in practice Agamemnon often dominates.
Priam
The king of Troy and son of Laomedon, he has 50 sons and 12 daughters with his wife Hecuba (presumably she does not bear them all), plus at least 42 more children with various concubines. Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, kills him in front of his wife and daughters during the siege of Troy. Hecuba (or Hecabe): The wife of Priam, she suffers the loss of most of her children but survives the fall of Troy. She is later turned into a dog. Andromache: The wife of Hector and mother of Astyanax, she futilely warns Hector about the war, then sees both her husband and son killed by the Greeks. After the war she is made concubine to Neoptolemus, and later marries the Trojan prophet Helenus.
Heimdall
The son of nine sisters, he is the god of light and guardians. He guards Bifrost, the rainbow bridge into Asgard. His senses are so sharp, he can see 100 miles by night or day and hear grass growing. He will call the Aesir into battle at Ragnarok with his horn Gjall (or Gjallerhorn).
Ward No. 6 (1892) by Anton Chekhov
The story is set in a run-down asylum, whose five inmates include the university-educated Ivan Gromov and the imbecilic Moiseika. Moiseika is the only inmate allowed to go into town, where he begs for items that are all confiscated by Nikita, the asylum's porter. The hospital is run by the medical assistant Sergei Sergeyitch and by the doctor Andrei Yefimitch Ragin, whose supervision gradually becomes lax. Andrei discusses philosophical issues with the postmaster Mikhail Averyanich, and later begins to engage in such conversations with Ivan. Dr. Yevgeny Hobotov, whom a local council appoints to work at the hospital, grows concerned at Andrei's long conversations with an inmate. Fearing that Andrei is not well, Mikhail proposes that they take a trip to Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Warsaw, but the journey goes poorly, and Andrei spends most of his money paying off Mikhail's gambling debts. Upon returning, Andrei finds out that he has been fired and replaced by Dr. Hobotov. Andrei withdraws into himself, and eventually shouts at Mikhail and Dr. Hobotov to leave him alone. Dr. Hobotov tricks Andrei into entering Ward No. 6, where mental patients are confined. When Andrei protests his incarceration, Nikita beats him. Andrei soon dies of a stroke; Mikhail and Andrei's servant Daryushka are the only people at the funeral.
Achilles
This "swift-footed" warrior is the greatest on the Greek side. His father is Peleus, a great warrior in his own right, and his mother is Thetis, a sea nymph. The consequences of Achilles' rage at Agamemnon for confiscating his geras (prize of honor) are the subject of the Iliad. Achilles kills Hector, but is killed by a poisoned arrow in the heel, the only vulnerable place on his body
La bohème (Giacomo Puccini, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, 1896)
This opera tells the story of four extremely poor friends who live in the Latin (i.e., Students') Quarter of Paris: Marcello the artist, Rodolfo the poet, Colline the philosopher, and Schaunard the musician. Rodolfo meets the seamstress Mimì who lives next door when her single candle is blown out and needs to be relit. Marcello is still attached to Musetta, who had left him for the rich man Alcindoro. In the final act, Marcello and Rodolfo have separated from their lovers, but cannot stop thinking about them. Musetta bursts into their garret apartment and tells them that Mimi is dying of consumption (tuberculosis); when they reach her, she is already dead. La bohème was based on a novel by Henry Murger and, in turn, formed the basis of the hit 1996 musical Rent by Jonathan Larson.
The Duchess of Malfi (John Webster, 1613)
This play is a product of the Jacobean period, in which the thrilling, macabre, and fantastic were prevalent on stage. The play follows the widowed Duchess, who loves Antonio Bologna, a good-hearted nobleman below her station. Her twin brother Ferdinand denounces her affection for Antonio out of incestuous envy. Her other brother, a Cardinal, hires the former galley-slave Bosola to spy on her. Bosola discovers the Duchess and Antonio have married (and had children), so the Cardinal sends them into exile. Ferdinand subsequently imprisons the Duchess, terrorizes her with asylum patients, and arranges for her to see statues resembling the dead bodies of her husband and children. Executioners sent by Ferdinand then kill the Duchess and her maid Cariola. Paranoia overtakes both brothers; the Cardinal kills his mistress Julia with a poisoned bible, and Ferdinand imagines he has become a werewolf. Bosola, disgusted by his own actions, tries to murder the Cardinal but mistakenly kills Antonio instead. In a climactic confrontation, Bosola, the Cardinal, and Ferdinand all kill each other, leaving the son of the Duchess and Antonio to inherit what remains.
Jude the Obscure, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Return of the Native
Thomas Hardy
The Magic Mountain, Joseph and His Brothers, Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice
Thomas Mann
Age of Reason, Rights of Man
Thomas Paine
Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon
The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, V
Thomas Pynchon
Look Homeward, Angel
Thomas Wolfe
You Can't Go Home Again
Thomas Wolfe
You Can't Go Home Again, The Web and the Rock, Of Time and the River, Look Homeward Angel
Thomas Wolfe
THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY
Thornton Wilder
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thornton Wilder
The Hunt for Red October
Tom Clancy
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Tom Wolfe
The Right Stuff
Tom Wolfe
The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
A Shakespeare comedy. It features a ship wrecked women disguising herself as a man, and getting caught in an intricate love triangle, while a group plots against a servant and the women disguised as a mans twin brother appears.
Twelfth Night
Duke Orsino, Countess Olivia, Sebastian, Viola, Sir Toby Belch, Malvolio
Twelfth Night
Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Two different people; Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797, married name Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) is best known as an advocate of educational equality for women, particularly in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). She was the mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) who married the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and is best known as the author of Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus
Tom Wolfe and Thomas Wolfe
Two different people; Tom Wolfe (1930-2018, in full Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr.) is the modern author and journalist who wrote The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and A Man in Full. Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938, in full Thomas Clayton Wolfe) was an earlier author of works like Look Homeward, Angel and You Can't Go Home Again.
A BEND IN THE RIVER
V.S. Naipaul
A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS
V.S. Naipaul
A novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, is framed as a puppet show. Follows a woman named Rebecca determined to make her place in society
Vanity Fair
TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
Virginia Woolf
LOLITA
Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
PALE FIRE
Vladimir Nabokov
A Samuel Beckett play. A strange thing where the two main characters are constantly waiting for someone, who never appears.
Waiting for Godot
THE MOVIEGOER
Walker Percy
ANGLE OF REPOSE
Wallace Stegner
The Monocle de Mon Oncle, Sunday Morning, The Emperor of Ice Cream
Wallace Stevens
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
Marius the Epicurean
Walter Pater
Another Leo Tolstoy novel which follows various noble russian families and their interactions with each other, with the looming threat of war with France, as a young man suddenly finds himself with a fortune.
War and Peace
The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler
Wealthy patriarch General Sternwood hires private eye Philip Marlowe to help his daughter Carmen, who is being blackmailed by bookseller Arthur Geiger. Sternwood also worries about Regan, his daughter Vivian's missing husband. Pretending to be a gay book collector, Marlowe learns that Geiger's bookstore is a pornography front, and after staking out Geiger's home, he hears gunshots and sees two cars speeding away. Geiger is dead, and Carmen Sternwood is naked and drugged in front of a camera from which the film has been taken. The next day, Sternwood's chauffeur is found dead in a car driven off a pier. Marlowe meets with Joe Brody, who is taking over Geiger's bookstore, when Carmen busts in with a gun, demanding the photographs in Brody's possession. Marlowe forces her to leave, then learns the chauffeur killed Geiger to protect Carmen from disrepute; Brody, also spying on Geiger that night, pursued and killed the chauffeur. Geiger's homorelationsual lover then arrives and kills Brody, thinking Brody killed Geiger. With the case seemingly solved, Marlowe still wonders about Vivien's missing husband Regan, as well as the missing wife of Eddie Mars, a criminal who backed Geiger's business. Carmen and Vivien each try to seduce Marlowe while Marlowe investigates those disappearances. On returning to Sternwood's house, Carmen asks Marlowe to teach her to shoot; at the lesson, she tries to shoot Marlowe, but Marlowe put blanks in the gun. This proves Marlowe's theory: Carmen is a nymphomaniac who killed Regan when he spurned her advances. Vivien admits she hid the body and lied to save her father from shame, and she promises to put Carmen in an asylum.
The Rise of Silas Lapham
William Dean Howells
AS I LAY DYING by
William Faulkner
Absalom! Absalom!
William Faulkner
Barn Burning, The Bear, Requiem for a Nun, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, Sanctuary
William Faulkner
LIGHT IN AUGUST
William Faulkner
Light in August
William Faulkner
THE SOUND AND THE FURY
William Faulkner
The Reivers
William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner
Emily Bronte's only novel. Tells the tale of a remote farmhouse and the family that lived there.
Wuthering Heights
Laocoon
Yet another son of Priam and Hecuba, this priest of Apollo shares Cassandra's doubt about the merits of bringing the Trojan horse into the city. "Timeo danaos et dona ferentes," he says (according to Vergil), "I fear the Greeks, even bearing gifts." Later, while sacrificing a bull, two serpents from the sea crush both him and his two young sons. The death of Laocoon is often blamed on Athena (into whose temple the serpent disappeared) but more likely the act of Poseidon, a fierce Greek partisan.
The Sirens
beautiful women who appeared harmless and sang a beautiful song to passing sailors, only to prove vicious and bloodthirsty when the sailors ventured too close. The Greeks often said that the Sirens were the daughters of the river god Achelous, while the Romans named their father as Phorcys. In the Argonautica, Chiron warns Jason that Orpheus will be instrumental on his journey, and Orpheus later saves all of Jason's crew (save Butes) by playing his lyre when they pass the Sirens to drown out their beautiful and alluring song. Odysseus also encountered the Sirens, tying himself to the mast of his ship so that he could safely hear their song while his crew plugged their ears with beeswax, on the advice of the sorceress Circe.
The Lady of the Lake
character who goes by many other names, among them Nimue and Vivien. In many stories, the Lady of the Lake is responsible for bestowing Excalibur upon King Arthur. She also gave Merlin his powers of sorcery and raised Sir Lancelot after his father's death. The Lady of the Lake is frequently associated with the isle of Avalon and is sometimes conflated with Morgan le Fay.
Helen of Troy
considered the most beautiful mortal woman during the Age of Heroes. Helen was the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and her siblings were Castor, Polydeuces (or Pollux), and Clytemnestra. When Helen married Menelaus, the king of Sparta, Helen's father Tyndareus forced the Greek kings to swear an oath to fight for her if she were kidnapped. When she was abducted by (or eloped with) Paris, a prince of Troy, the whole Greek world plunged into the Trojan War. For this reason, Christopher Marlowe had Doctor Faustus refer to Helen as "the face that launched a thousand ships."
Danaë
daughter of King Acrisius of Argos. The king consulted an oracle to ask if he would ever have a son, and the oracle replied that he wouldn't, but his daughter would, and that grandson would overthrow him. In response, he shut Danaë up in a chamber in his palace, but Zeus appeared in the form of a shower of gold and impregnated her; shortly thereafter, her son Perseus was born. Acrisius then cast Danaë and Perseus out to sea in a chest, but with the assistance of Poseidon they were rescued by the fisherman Dictys. Danaë had no interest in marrying Dictys's brother King Seriphos, who agreed not to pursue her if Perseus could kill the Gorgon Medusa
Queen Guinevere
daughter of Leodegrance and the wife of King Arthur. In one story, Guinevere is abducted by Meleagant (or Melwas), a king of Somerset, and rescued by Lancelot, beginning an illicit affair between the two. After the affair is revealed to Arthur (in some sources by Mordred, in others by Agravain), Arthur orders her to be burned at the stake; she is rescued from that fate by Lancelot in a battle that results in the deaths of Sir Gareth and Sir Gaheris and the permanent exile of Lancelot. Some sources say that Guinevere spent her final days hiding in the Tower of London or in a nearby convent.
Egyptian creation myth
emergence of Ra (or Re), the sun god, from the ocean in the form of an egg (or, alternately, a flower). Ra brought forth four children: Geb, Shu, Nut, and Tefnut. Shu and Tefnut became manifestations of air and moisture. From Geb, the god of the earth, and Nut, goddess of the sky, were spawned four other gods: Osiris, Isis, Set (or Seth), and Nepthys. These nine gods became known as the ennead ("group of nine"). The center of their worship was Heliopolis, as all were tied to Ra, the sun god. The Heliopolitan ennead was one of several in Egyptian theology, and at times this grouping was superseded by other sets. Two notable alternatives were the ennead of the city of Memphis, led by the god Ptah, and the ennead of Thebes, with Amon at its head. Not surprisingly, the pre-eminence of these variations coincided with their corresponding cities' political control of Egypt.
Penelope
ever-faithful wife of Odysseus, the king of Ithaca whose long journey home is the subject of The Odyssey. While Odysseus was away, Penelope was courted by dozens of suitors led by Antinous, but she held them off with cunning: she told them she'd wed one when she finished weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus's father Laertes, but she unwove her progress each night. When Odysseus returned, she tested his identity by asking the maid to move their bed, which cannot be done since the bed—crafted by Odysseus—had one post that was a living olive tree. Her only child is a son, Telemachus.
Atalanta
fierce warrior who drew first blood in the Calydonian Boar hunt led by Meleager, who gifted her the Boar's hide when it was finally killed. Atalanta's father left her to die on a mountaintop because he wanted a son, but she was saved by a she-bear and later became a hunter of Artemis. According to some sources, Atalanta was also the only female Argonaut. She married Hippomenes after he beat her in a footrace by slowing her down with golden apples given to him by Aphrodite; their son, Parthenopaios, was one of the Seven Against Thebes
Sir Lancelot
foremost among the Knights of the Round Table, an expert swordsman and jouster who is the primary figure of the Vulgate Cycle. The son of King Ban of Benwick, Lancelot was raised by the Lady of the Lake, which earned him the epithet "du Lac" or "of the Lake." Another of his epithets is "Knight of the Cart," which he earned for riding in a dwarf's cart while searching for Guinevere after she was kidnapped. Aside from his adulterous affair with Queen Guinevere, Lancelot is known for fathering Sir Galahad with Elaine of Corbenic, who had tricked Lancelot into sleeping with her by disguising herself as Guinevere. After his betrayal of Arthur was revealed, Lancelot fled to France and was therefore not present during the Battle of Camlann
The Minotaur (also Asterion)
half-man, half-bull monster kept in the Labyrinth on Crete by King Minos. Minos prayed to Poseidon to send a snow-white bull as a sign of support during Minos' quarrel with his brothers for the throne of Crete, but instead of sacrificing the animal to the sea god, Minos kept it for himself. Angered, Poseidon caused Minos' wife Pasiphaë to lust after the bull, so Daedalus built her a wooden cow so she could mate with the bull. The product of this encounter was the Minotaur (lit. "Bull of Minos"). After Minos' son Androgeus was killed by Athenians, Minos demanded seven Athenians male youths and seven Athenian female youths, to be selected by lots every seven or nine years (accounts vary) as retribution; these victims were fed to the Minotaur. On the third drawing of the lots, the Athenian hero Theseus volunteered to vanquish the beast; with the help of Minos' daughter Ariadne, who gave Theseus a ball of string so he could find his way out of the Labyrinth, Theseus slew the Minotaur. On the return voyage from Crete, Theseus forgot to change his sails from black back to white, and his father Aegeus jumped into the sea, believing his son had died.
The Sphinx, identified in the Theogony as "Phix"
hybrid monster whose parentage varies widely from source to source. She was a lion-bodied, winged monster with the face of a human, who terrorized the city of Thebes in the generations before Oedipus. She would give a riddle — "What creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?" — and eat anyone who was unable to answer correctly. It is possible that the Sphinx was sent to Thebes from Ethiopia by either the goddess Hera or the war god Ares. Eventually, Oedipus correctly answered the riddle— "Man" — and the Sphinx threw herself off her mountainside perch to her death.
Typhon (also Typhoeus or Typhaon) and Echidna
known as the Father and Mother of All Monsters due to their numerous monstrous offspring, including the two-headed dog Orthrus, the Nemean Lion, the Hydra, the Chimera, and Cerberus. Typhon was the last son of Gaea and Tartarus, while Echidna's parentage is obscured by ancient sources; most often, she is listed as a daughter of Phorcys and Ceto. In the Theogony, Hesiod describes a climactic battle between Zeus and Typhon following Zeus' defeat of the Titans: Typhon rips out Zeus' sinews and is nearly victorious, but Hermes restores Zeus's sinews and Zeus finally overpowers the giant monster. Typhon was then trapped under Mount Etna, where he is believed to cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
The Lernaean Hydra
one of the offspring of Typhon and Echidna. The Hydra was a multi-headed water serpent that breathed poisonous gas and had toxic blood, and every time one head was cut off, two more grew back in its place. The Hydra dwelled in the Spring of Amymone in the swamp or lake of Lerna near the Peloponnese, beneath which was said to be an entrance to the Underworld. The Hydra was killed by Heracles as his second labor for Eurystheus during a battle in which Heracles' nephew Iolaus provided aid by cauterizing the neck stumps after Heracles cut each head off, preventing additional heads from growing back. After killing the monster, Heracles dipped his arrows in the Hydra's blood; the poisoned arrows were later used against the Stymphalian Birds, Geryon, and the centaur Nessus.
Medusa
only mortal member of the Gorgons, a trio of monstrous daughters of Phorcys and Ceto who had brass hands, fangs, and venomous snakes for hair; the other two were Stheno and Euryale. Many early sources state that Medusa was born a monster, though Ovid's Metamorphoses state that Medusa was a beautiful woman until she was raped by Poseidon in Athena's temple and cursed by the goddess. Gazing directly into Medusa's eyes resulted in the onlooker being turned into stone. She was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who was sent to retrieve her head by the tyrant Polydectes, whom Perseus then killed with the head. Perseus gave the head of Medusa to Athena, who placed it on her shield, the aegis. When Medusa was beheaded, the winged horse Pegasus and the giant warrior Chrysaor emerged, her sons by Poseidon. According to Ovid, Medusa's head was also used to petrify the Titan Atlas.
Tristan and Iseult
pair of lovers who predate the stories of King Arthur but nonetheless appear in the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles. Sir Tristan was a knight who brings Iseult the Fair back to Cornwall to marry his uncle King Mark after killing Morholt, an Irish knight extorting the king. During the return journey, the pair ingest a powerful potion and fall deeply in love with each other, but Iseult nevertheless marries Tristan's uncle. The love potion, however, forces the pair to continuously seek one another out, and King Mark eventually discovers their affair. Tristan escapes his execution and later marries a different woman known as Iseult of the White Hands. Their story inspired Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde
Merlin
powerful wizard who serves as Arthur's chief advisor. When Merlin was a child, King Vortigern was told that the boy's blood was necessary to keep his tower from constantly collapsing; however, Merlin identified a pool beneath the tower in which two dragons fought as the source of the instability. Some sources credit Merlin with constructing the Round Table as well as Stonehenge. Merlin's primary apprentice is the sorceress Morgan le Fay, Arthur's half-sister on his mother's side. Some sources have Merlin wind up trapped in an enchanted tomb (possibly in a cave, possibly in a tree) by a figure identified as Vivien or Nimue (the Lady of the Lake). In other tales, Merlin dies and is buried in the legendary forest Brocéliande.
Polyphemus, the most famous Cyclops in Greek mythology
son of Poseidon and the sea nymph Thoosa. The most notable myth involving Polyphemus is his appearance in Book IX of Homer's Odyssey: after Odysseus and his crew land on Polyphemus' island after escaping the Lotus-Eaters, Polyphemus eats two of Odysseus' crew, imprisons the rest in his cave, and eats four more before the survivors can escape. To escape, Odysseus gets Polyphemus drunk on wine and blinds the one-eyed giant with a stick; the next morning, Odysseus and his crew ride out of Polyphemus' cave, hiding underneath the Cyclops' sheep. When Polyphemus asks Odysseus' name, Odysseus responds "No one" or "No man" (translations vary), and Polyphemus prays to his father Poseidon to make Odysseus' journey home treacherous. In another myth, Polyphemus falls in love with the nymph Galatea, who in turn loves the human Acis. Polyphemus then kills Acis with a boulder out of jealousy.
Medea
sorceress from the island of Colchis; her father was King Aeëtes, and her aunt was the witch Circe. Medea encountered the hero Jason when he and the Argonauts came to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece, and she helped him yoke fire-breathing oxen and sow dragon's teeth. Medea left Colchis with Jason, and on the voyage home she killed both her brother Absyrtus and the giant bronze automaton Talos. She and Jason had several children together, but Jason ultimately left Medea for the princess Glauce; in vengeance, she killed two of her children and fled on a golden chariot.
Arachne
talented Lydian weaver who constantly boasted that her skills were better than that of any of the gods. Arachne challenged the goddess Athena to a weaving competition, during which Arachne wove a tapestry depicting the gods' transgressions against mankind and Athena depicted four contests between mortals and the gods. The result of the competition depends on the sources: some say that Arachne won but Athena was insulted by her images and destroyed Arachne's work, and others say that Athena's weaving was superior. In all versions, though, Athena turns Arachne into a spider.
Ariadne
the daughter of King Minos and Queen Pasiphaë, making her a princess of Crete. Minos's palace in Knossos is sometimes referred to as the "dancing ground of Ariadne." When Theseus came to Crete to kill the Minotaur, Ariadne fell in love with him and gave him a ball of twine to help him navigate the Labyrinth. Ariadne and Theseus left Crete together, but he later abandoned her on the island of Naxos where she was saved by Dionysus, whom she married. Her wedding diadem was placed in the heavens as the constellation Corona Borealis
King Arthur, "The Once and Future King"
the son of Uther Pendragon and Lady Igraine. Uther disguised himself as Igraine's husband Gorlois to sleep with her. Arthur wields the legendary sword Excalibur and rules the Britons from the castle of Camelot beside his wife, Queen Guinevere. The stories of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regnum Britanniae, works by Chrétien de Troyes, and Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur, among others. The different sources disagree on various details; for instance, some sources state that Arthur received Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, while in others he pulls the sword from a stone. After the Battle of Camlann, King Arthur gives Excalibur to his marshal, Sir Bedivere, and is taken to the isle of Avalon to die.
Hecuba (or Hekabe)
the wife of King Priam, and therefore the Queen of Troy, during the Trojan War. Her children included Paris—who kidnapped Helen—and Hector, the great Trojan warrior who was slain by Achilles. In Book VI of the Iliad, she leads the Trojan woman in prayer to Zeus on behalf of the Trojan warriors. After the war, Hecuba was grief-stricken upon learning of the death of her youngest daughter Polyxena, and she was given to Odysseus as a slave.
Cerberus
three-headed (or, according to Hesiod's Theogony, 50-headed) dog who guarded the gates to the Underworld. A child of Typhon and Echidna, Cerberus is described as a hellhound with a mane of snakes, the claws of a lion, and the tail of a deadly snake. As Heracles' twelfth and final labor, he had to bring Cerberus back from the Underworld, which he did following an intense wrestling match. Prior to the task, Heracles was instructed in the Eleusinian Mysteries, and freed Theseus from being stuck on a chair in Hades. In Virgil's Aeneid, the Cumaean Sibyl gives Cerberus three drugged honeycakes so that she and Aeneas can enter the Underworld.
Clytemnestra
wife of King Agamemnon and the sister of Castor, Polydeuces, and Helen. When Agamemnon's troops were stuck at Aulis en route to Troy, he sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia, which made Clytemnestra very angry. She later began an affair with Aegisthus, Agamemnon's cousin; when Agamemnon returned to Mycenae after the Trojan War, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus murdered him and his concubine Cassandra. In response, Clytemnestra and Agamemnon's son Orestes killed both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, continuing the curse of the House of Atreus
Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)
A Catholic American author who wrote in the "Southern Gothic" style. In her story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," Bailey takes his family on a vacation; when they stop at a diner, "the grandmother" talks with the owner Red Sammy about The Misfit, an escaped murderer. After the cat Patty Sing causes the family's car to crash into a ditch, a group of men led by the Misfit murder the family, including the grandmother, who claims The Misfit is one of her own children before he shoots her three times. In "Good Country People," Hulga has her prosthetic leg taken by Manley Pointer, a nihilistic atheist Bible salesman. O'Connor also wrote "Everything That Rises Must Converge," in which Julian rides on a newly-integrated bus with his mother.
Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
A French author who frequently used ironic endings in his stories, including "The Necklace." In that story, Mathilde Loisel borrows the expensive-looking title piece of jewelry from Madame Forestier, and loses it at a high-class party. In order to afford a 36,000 francs replacement, she and her husband sell everything they own. Ten years later, Madame Forestier recognizes Mathilde on the street and informs her that the necklace was a fake. In "Boule de Suif," translated into English as "Ball of Fat," the title character is a prostitute who is on a carriage leaving Prussian-occupied Rouen. The travelers are detained by the Prussians until Boule de Suif sleeps with an officer, for which she is judged for the remainder of the trip even though her fellow passengers pressured her to do so.
Hadith
A hadith is a report of the words or actions of a Muslim religious figure, most frequently the prophet Muhammad. Each consists of a matn, or text of the original oral law itself, as well as an isnad, or chain of authorities through which it has been passed by word of mouth through the generations. Collectively, the hadith point Muslims toward the Sunna, or practice of the Prophet, which together with the Qur'an forms the basis for shari'a, usually translated as Islamic law
The Iceman Cometh (Eugene O'Neill, 1939)
A portrait of drunkenness and hopeless dreams. Regular patrons of the End of the Line Café anticipate the annual arrival of Theodore "Hickey" Hickman, but in 1912 he returns to them sober. After the patrons reveal their "pipe dreams," Hickey implores them to give up those dreams and lead productive lives. The "Iceman" is supposed to represent the "death" found in reality.
Our Town (Thornton Wilder, 1938)
A sentimental story that takes place in the village of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire just after the turn of the 20th century, Our Town is divided into three acts: "Daily Life" (Professor Willard and Editor Webb gossip on the everyday lives of town residents); "Love and Marriage" (Emily Webb and George Gibbs fall in love and marry); and "Death" (Emily dies while giving birth, and her spirit converses about the meaning of life with other dead people in the cemetery). A Stage Manager talks to the audience and serves as a narrator throughout the drama, which is performed on a bare stage.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001, United Kingdom)
Adams wrote comic science fiction and fantasy novels that poked fun at genre tropes and the quirks of British culture. After working on Monty Python's Flying Circus, Adams created the BBC radio series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which premiered in 1978. The radio series became the basis of a series of novels (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe, and Everything; So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish; Mostly Harmless; and the authorized sequel And Another Thing..., which was written by Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer after Adams died). The Hitchhiker's series focuses on Arthur Dent, an ordinary Englishman who becomes one of the last humans in the universe after Earth is destroyed by the alien Vogons. Arthur and his friend Ford Prefect travel on a starship named the Heart of Gold, along with the "paranoid android" Marvin, the two-headed galactic president Zaphod Beeblebrox, and the human scientist Trillian. Arthur eventually discovers that "answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything" is 42 (although the question itself remains unknown). Characters in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series sometimes consult the title reference work, which offers the advice "Don't Panic," encourages hitchhikers to carry towels at all times, and provides the recipe for a drink called the "Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster." Besides the Hitchhiker's series, Adams also co-authored two books offering comic definitions of British place names (The Meaning of Liff and The Deeper Meaning of Liff), and wrote a pair of novels about the supernatural adventures of the private investigator Dirk Gently (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul)
Nicholas Nickleby (1839)
After his father dies, Nicholas Nickleby is sent to work at Dotheboys Hall by his cruel uncle Ralph. With the help of the disabled Smike, Nicholas beats the foul schoolmaster Wackford Squeers, and escapes to London. Nicholas's sister Kate works with the milliner Madame Mantalini, but must confront the attentions of the foppish Mr. Mantalini and Sir Mulberry Hawk. Nicholas finds employment in Portsmouth with the theater manager Vincent Crummles, then returns to London and works for the Cheeryble brothers. Smike dies, and Ralph commits suicide after learning that Smike was his son. Nicholas marries a woman named Madeline Bray, and Kate weds the Cheerybles' nephew, Frank.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963, United Kingdom)
Aldous Huxley belonged to a prominent family of British intellectuals that included the Victorian evolutionist Thomas Henry Huxley. Although Aldous Huxley depicted his own social milieu in novels such as Crome Yellow and Point Counter Point, he is best known for writing about a dystopian "World State" in the 1932 novel Brave New World. Extrapolating from Henry Ford's model of industrial production and contemporary advances in biochemistry, Huxley imagined a world in which the fictional "Bokanovsky's Process" is used to create human clones, which are then modified to posses different intellectual abilities, and sorted into social castes named after the Greek letters Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Inhabitants of the World State enjoy a prosperous existence, immersive entertainment known as Feelies, and the drug soma, but lack family connections and spiritual fulfillment. The shallow pleasures of the World State are contrasted with the ideals of John the Savage, a young man who grew up on a New Mexico reservation. John is initially delighted to meet the World State residents Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne, and excitedly quotes the "Brave New World" speech from Shakespeare's play The Tempest. However, John soon grows disgusted with "civilization." After the World Controller Mustapha Mond forbids John from living on an isolated island with the aspiring writer Helmholtz Watson, John unsuccessfully tries to retreat from society, and eventually hangs himself.
Antigone (Sophocles, c. 441 BC)
Along with Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone is one of the three surviving "Theban plays" by Sophocles that center on the family of Oedipus. The tragedy takes place in the immediate aftermath of a battle in which Oedipus's two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, killed each other while struggling to control Thebes. The current ruler of the city, Creon, has declared that Eteocles will be given an honorable funeral, but Polyneices will be treated as a rebel and left unburied. Oedipus's daughter Antigone disobeys Creon's order, and buries her brother Polyneices against the advice of her frightened sister, Ismene. Despite the intervention of Creon's son Haemon, who is betrothed to Antigone, Creon sentences Antigone to be entombed alive. Soon after she is imprisoned, Antigone hangs herself. Haemon then commits suicide out of grief, and Creon's wife Eurydice kills herself when she learns that Haemon is dead. The once-proud Creon blames himself for the loss of his wife and son, and prays for death.
Isaac Asimov (1920-1992, United States)
Along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, Asimov was one of genre science fiction's "Big Three" writers. During the 1930s' and 1940s' "Golden Age" of science fiction pulp magazines, Asimov worked closely with Astounding Science Fiction editor John W. Campbell Jr. to create stories such as "Nightfall," which describes a rare moment of darkness on a planet with multiple suns, and "Robbie," the first of Asimov's many works about robots with positronic brains. (The word "robot" was introduced by the Czech author Karel Čapek in the 1920 play R.U.R., which depicts the worldwide uprising of "Rossum's Universal Robots"). Before Asimov, most stories about artificial life had followed the template established by Shelley's Frankenstein, in which a scientist who tries to usurp God's power to create life is ultimately destroyed by his own creation. Asimov challenged this trope by creating the "Three Laws of Robotics," which robots in his stories are obligated to follow: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. By using these laws in dozens of stories (some of which were collected in the book I, Robot), Asimov helped to promote a conception of robots as useful machines rather than inhuman monsters. Asimov is also known for his Foundation series, which was inspired by Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The Foundation series begins when the "psychohistorian" Hari Seldon realizes that the Galactic Empire will soon fall, and creates the title organization to limit the length of the ensuing Dark Age. Asimov eventually linked together his Robot and Foundation series into a far-reaching "history of the future," which also includes Asimov's novels The Caves of Steel, Pebble in the Sky, and The Stars, Like Dust.
Upanishads
Also called Vedanta, or "last part of the Vedas," the Upanishads were written in Sanskrit between 900 and 500 BC. Part poetry but mainly prose, the earlier Upanishads laid the foundation for the development of several key Hindu ideas, such as connecting the individual soul (atman) with the universal soul (Brahman). Spiritual release, or moksha, could be achieved through meditation and asceticism. The name "Upanishads" means "to sit down close," as pupils did when a teacher recited them.
Don DeLillo (born 1936)
American author. His 1985 breakout novel White Noise is narrated by Jack Gladney, a professor of "Hitler Studies" at a Midwestern college. After a chemical spill results in an "Airborne Toxic Event," Jack's wife Babette begins taking a mysterious drug called Dylar. Three years later DeLillo published Libra, a novel about assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's participation in a fictional conspiracy against John F. Kennedy. DeLillo also wrote the 1997 novel Underworld, in which the waste management executive Nick Shay buys the baseball that was hit by New York Giants player Bobby Thomson in the 1951 "Shot Heard 'Round the World."
David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)
American author. His massive 1996 novel Infinite Jest depicts a future North America in which years are named after corporate products. The novel is set mainly at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House and the Enfield Tennis Academy (where Hal Incandenza is a student). Hal's father, James, directs "the Entertainment," a dangerously enthralling film sought by Quebeçois terrorists known as the Wheelchair Assassins. Wallace's other novels are The Broom of the System and The Pale King, the latter of which was left unfinished at his 2008 suicide. Wallace is also known for his essay collections, including Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
American novelist best known for the 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five. The novel centers on Billy Pilgrim, who experiences his life out of order after becoming "unstuck in time." Like Vonnegut, Billy survives the firebombing of Dresden during World War II. Billy is also kidnapped by aliens called Tralfamadorians, and displayed in a zoo along with the actress Montana Wildhack. The Tralfamadorians have a fatalistic attitude towards mortality, which is mirrored in the novel's repetition of the phrase "so it goes" after any mention of death. Vonnegut's earlier novel Cat's Cradle describes a fictional religion called Bokononism, which was founded on the Caribbean island of San Lorenzo. The plot of Cat's Cradle partly focuses on ice-nine, a substance invented by Felix Hoenikker that has the power to destroy all life on Earth.
Joseph Heller (1923-1999)
American novelist. He satirized Army bureaucracy in his novel Catch-22, which was based on his experiences as a bombardier on the Italian front during World War II. The novel is set in Rome and on the Mediterranean island of Pianosa, where John Yossarian is stationed with the 256th Squadron. "Catch-22" is a rule stating that airmen do not have to fly missions if they are insane, but that applying to be excused from flying missions is proof of sanity; consequently, there is no way to avoid the dangerous missions. Characters in the novel include the arch-capitalist mess officer Milo Minderbinder, who sets up a syndicate called M&M Enterprises, and Major Major Major, who is accidentally promoted to the rank of major because of his unusual name. The novel's main antagonist is Colonel Cathcart, who continually raises the number of missions that airmen must fly before they are allowed to go home. In 1994 Heller wrote a sequel to Catch-22, titled Closing Time.
J. D. Salinger (1919-2010)
An American author best known for the novel The Catcher in the Rye. Many of Salinger's short stories featured the Glass family, including "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," in which Seymour and Muriel Glass are on vacation at a Florida resort. Seymour meets a young girl named Sybil Carpenter and talks with her about the title creatures, before returning to his hotel room and shooting himself. In "For Esmé—with Love and Squalor," the narrator Sergeant X replies to a wedding invitation with two distinct memories; in the first, he meets Esmé, an English orphan, during a church choir practice, and in the second, set during his time as a soldier in Bavaria, he receives a letter containing a wristwatch from Esmé. Both of those stories are included in Salinger's collection Nine Stories.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012)
An American author known for his science fiction works. "There Will Come Soft Rains," which appears in his collection The Martian Chronicles and takes its title from a Sara Teasdale poem, describes an empty house that survived a nuclear catastrophe. The house is fully automated and continues to operate even though the family is dead, a fact demonstrated by their silhouettes permanently burned on the side of the house. In his story "A Sound of Thunder," Eckels steps on a butterfly while hunting a T. Rex on a time-travel safari, which changes the future timeline so that the fascist Deutscher wins an election
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
An American author known for his works in the detective fiction, science fiction, and horror genres. In "The Cask of Amontillado," the narrator, Montresor, lures Fortunato into catacombs with the promise of the title wine, but ends up chaining Fortunato to a wall and burying him alive due to unnamed "insults." Poe also wrote "The Tell-Tale Heart," in which an unnamed narrator murders an old man with a "vulture-eye" and buries him beneath his floorboards. However, while being questioned by police, the guilty narrator hears the constant beating of his victim's heart, and orders them to "tear up the planks" to reveal the body. Other short stories by Poe include "The Gold-Bug," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and "The Fall of the House of Usher."
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
An American author many of whose stories feature the semi-autobiographical character Nick Adams. Adams appears in "Big Two-Hearted River," in which he goes on a fishing trip to the town of Seney, Michigan. In "Hills Like White Elephants," a woman named Jig talks with a man at a train station, considering an unnamed "procedure," which is implied to be an abortion. "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" begins with the description of a frozen leopard carcass; its protagonist, Harry, is a writer who dies of gangrene while on an African safari with his wife Helen. Hemingway also apocryphally wrote a six-word story consisting of the words "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
An American author whose stories are often set in New England. In "The Minister's Black Veil," Hawthorne wrote about Reverend Hopper, who stubbornly refuses to take off the title article of clothing. Hawthorne also wrote "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," in which the title character shows off water from the Fountain of Youth. Both of those stories are included in his collection Twice-Told Tales. In "Rappaccini's Daughter," the title character is Beatrice, the child of a scientist who grows poisonous plants, who herself becomes poisonous. After Giovanni falls in love with Beatrice, he brings her an antidote so they can be together, but, instead of curing her, the antidote kills Beatrice. That story appears alongside "The Birth-Mark" and "Young Goodman Brown" in the collection Mosses from an Old Manse.
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965)
An American short story author and novelist known for her works in the mystery and horror genres. Her most famous short story is "The Lottery," whose publication in The New Yorker was extremely controversial, garnering her hate mail. The story begins with village children gathering stones, foreshadowing the end result of the title event. Mr. Summers tells all of the village families to draw slips of paper from a black box, and Bill Hutchinson's has a black spot. The entire Hutchinson family then has to draw, and Tessie receives the black spot, meaning she has "won" the title event. The story ends with her yelling "It isn't fair" as the townspeople stone her to death.
O. Henry (William Sydney Porter, 1862-1910)
An American short story author known for his twist endings. He included many of his stories in his collections Cabbages and Kings and The Four Million. In his story "The Gift of the Magi," the married couple Jim and Della exchange Christmas gifts. Della sells her hair to Madame Sofronie and buys a gold pocket-watch chain, while Jim sells his watch in order to buy a set of combs, rendering each other's gifts useless. O. Henry also wrote "The Ransom of Red Chief," in which Ebenezer Dorset's son, the title character, is kidnapped by Bill and Sam, who intend to hold him for ransom. However, "Red Chief" annoys his captors so much that they pay Mr. Dorset to give him his son back
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)
An Argentine author known for his philosophical stories. In "The Library of Babel," the narrator's universe is made of adjacent hexagonal rooms, forming a library containing all possible 410-page books consisting of 25 basic characters. Another story by Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths," is framed as a manuscript written by Doctor Yu Tsun, a World War I spy, who is pursued by Richard Madden. He realizes that the title labyrinth is actually an unfinished novel, and eventually shoots Stephen Albert to communicate the location of a British artillery park. Those two stories appear along with "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in Borges's collection Ficciones. Borges also wrote "The Aleph," whose title location contains all other points in space.
Angelo, from Measure for Measure
Angelo is entrusted with the rule of Vienna by Duke Vicentio, who pretends to leave the city but actually remains present, disguised as "Friar Lodowick." Angelo enforces antiquated laws against fornication, resulting in Claudio's arrest and imminent execution. Claudio's sister, the novice nun Isabella, pleads for Claudio to be pardoned; Angelo agrees, but only if Isabella will have sex with him. After debate, Duke Vincentio proposes a "bed trick." Isabella pretends that she is willing to have relations with Angelo in absolute darkness and silence, which allows Mariana, a woman who was once betrothed to Angelo, to take Isabella's place. Although the plan works, and Angelo believes that he had relations with Isabella, he goes back on his word and orders Claudio's execution. This forces the duke to arrange a "head trick," in which the head of the pirate Ragozine is presented to Angelo, and Claudio's life is saved. Once the duke "returns" to Vienna, Isabella and Mariana petition him to right their wrongs. Angelo initially denies the charges brought against him, but confesses once he learns that the duke and Friar Lodowick are the same person. Angelo's life is spared for Mariana's sake, and the duke proposes marriage to Isabella.
Qur'an (or Koran)
Arabic for "recitation," it is the most sacred scripture of Islam. The Qur'an is subdivided into 114 chapters, called suras, which — except the first one — are arranged in descending order of length. According to Muslim belief, the angel Jibril (Gabriel) visited the prophet Muhammad in AD 610 and revealed the work to him. Various suras discuss absolute submission to Allah (God), happiness in paradise versus torture in hell, and the mercy, compassion, and justice of Allah. The third caliph, Uthman (644-656), formalized the text after many of his oral reciters were killed in battle.
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)
Argentine short story writer who often dealt with meta-fictional themes. His story "The Library of Babel" depicts an infinite library made up of hexagonal rooms, which contain every possible 410-page book. In "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," the fictional 20th-century author Pierre Menard writes a line-by-line reproduction of Cervantes's Don Quixote, which is much more interesting than the original because of the historical context in which the new version was produced. Borges's story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" describes an imaginary realm, created by a secret society of intellectuals, that gradually intrudes into the world of the story. "The Aleph" is named after a point from which every other point in the universe can be perceived. Many of Borges's best-known stories appeared in the collections Ficciones and Labyrinths, the latter of which is named after a common motif in Borges's work. For example, in "The Garden of Forking Paths" the author Ts'ui Pên tries to create a metaphorical "labyrinth" by writing a novel in which every event is followed by every possible outcome. The story is narrated by Ts'ui Pên's descendent, Dr. Yu Tsun, who kills the Sinologist Stephen Albert to convey a coded message to German forces during World War I.
Mary Shelley (1797-1851, United Kingdom)
As the daughter of the philosophers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft (the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women), and the wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley was a product of both the Enlightenment and Romantic eras. Her 1818 novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus helped to lay the groundwork for modern science fiction by contrasting Enlightenment ideas of progress with a Romantic conception of nature as an untameable force. The idea for Frankenstein came to Shelley while she was taking part in a friendly writing competition at Lord Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. Inspired by Luigi Galvani's experiments in "animal electricity," Shelley wrote about the Swiss scientist Victor Frankenstein, who reanimates dead tissue and creates a "monster." This attempt to control nature fails, as the monster murders Frankenstein's brother William, friend Henry Clerval, and wife Elizabeth before fleeing to the Arctic. Frankenstein pursues his creation, and tells his story to the explorer Robert Walton before dying. Shelley presented an even bleaker scenario in her 1826 novel The Last Man, which describes Lionel Verney's efforts to survive a 21st-century plague that devastates human civilization.
The Birds (Aristophanes, c. 414 BC)
At the start of this comedy, two Athenians named Peisthetaerus and Euelpides seek out Tereus, a human king who was transformed into a bird called a hoopoe (some translations refer to Tereus as "Epops," the Greek word for "hoopoe"). Peisthetaerus convinces Tereus and his fellow birds to build a city in the sky, which would allow the birds to demand sacrifices from humans, and to blockade the Olympian gods. Peisthetaerus and Euelpides eat a root that gives them wings, and aid the birds in the construction of the city Nephelokokkygia, or "Cloudcuckooland." Peisthetaerus also drives away objectionable visitors, such as a poet, an oracle-monger, and a dealer in decrees. After the messenger goddess Iris is found in the city, the residents of Cloudcuckooland demand concessions from the Olympians. On the advice of Prometheus, Peisthetaerus demands that Zeus give up his mistress Basileia, or Sovereignty, from whom "all things come." Peisthetaerus marries Basileia, and is crowned king.
The Bacchae (Euripides, c. 405 BC)
At the start of this tragedy, the god Dionysus arrives in Thebes to seek vengeance against his aunt Agave, who has denied his immortality, and her son Pentheus, who as King of Thebes bans worship of Dionysus. The god first drives the women of the city mad, causing them to act as wild Maenads. He then convinces Pentheus to disguise himself in animal skins, and spy on the maddened women. However, the demented Agave mistakes Pentheus for a mountain lion, and dismembers her own son. The climax of the play occurs when Agave presents the head of Pentheus to her horrified father, Cadmus. As Agave realizes what she has done, Dionysus chastises her for her lack of respect, and foretells how Cadmus will spend his final days.
Duke Frederick, from As You Like It
Before the opening of the play, Frederick overthrew his brother, Duke Senior, and seized control of the court. There, Frederick harbors his brother's daughter Rosalind as a companion to his own daughter, Celia. When Frederick banishes Rosalind out of fear that she is plotting against him, Celia volunteers to go with her beloved cousin, and suggests that they reunite with Duke Senior in the Forest of Arden. At the same time, a young nobleman named Orlando flees to the Forest of Arden to escape his brother Oliver's mistreatment. Frederick suspects that Orlando is in the company of Celia and Rosalind, and seizes Oliver's lands until Orlando can be produced. After Oliver departs to search for his brother, Duke Frederick is not heard of again until the end of the play, when Oliver and Orlando's brother Jaques reports that Frederick suddenly repented of his crimes after meeting "an old religious man." Frederick relinquishes the crown to Duke Senior, and restores the property of Duke Senior's supporters
King Claudius, from The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Before the start of the play, Claudius became the ruler of Denmark by pouring poison into the ear of his sleeping brother, King Hamlet. Claudius then married Gertrude, King Hamlet's widow. In the play's first act, Prince Hamlet learns of his uncle's treachery by speaking to King Hamlet's ghost. Hamlet then arranges for a troupe of actors to perform a play titled The Murder of Gonzago, which Hamlet revises to increase the similarities to his father's death. Claudius is disturbed by the performance, and storms out during the murder scene. Later, Claudius prays for forgiveness, causing Hamlet to delay killing him out of fear that Claudius's soul would go to heaven. As Hamlet feigns madness, Claudius sends him to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who unknowingly carry a letter calling for Hamlet's execution. After Hamlet escapes and returns to Denmark, Claudius arranges for Hamlet to fight a duel with Laertes, who seeks revenge for the death of his father, Polonius, and sister, Ophelia. Laertes uses a poison-tipped sword, and Claudius prepares a poisoned drink as a back-up. When Laertes falls in combat he reveals the plot, prompting Hamlet to stab Claudius with the poisoned sword, and make Claudius drink from the poisoned cup.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012, United States)
Bradbury's science fiction and fantasy stories often contain nostalgic elements related to his Midwestern childhood. The Illinois community Green Town is the setting of Bradbury's novels Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes, both of which center on boys beginning to enter adulthood. Similarly, small towns on Earth and Mars are the setting of many stories in Bradbury's 1950 collection The Martian Chronicles, which is made up of loosely connected works about the expeditions of human astronauts, the displacement of indigenous Martians as human settlers arrive, and a nuclear war that destroys most life on Earth. Bradbury also wrote about Mars in several stories that appear in his collection The Illustrated Man, whose title character has tattoos that foretell the future. Another theme that recurs in Bradbury's works is censorship and the importance of literature. This theme is expressed most strongly in Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, which depicts a dystopian future in which "firemen" burn books. The protagonist of Fahrenheit 451 is Guy Montag, a fireman whose wife Mildred is deeply depressed and addicted to television programs that she watches on large "parlor walls." Montag begins to question his profession after meeting the free-spirited Clarisse McClellan, and secretly preserves books to read, leading to a rebuke from Fire Captain Beatty. Montag is eventually pursued by a robotic attack dog called the "Mechanical Hound," but escapes to join a community of rebels who memorize classic works of literature.
Zadie Smith (born 1975)
British novelist. Her 2000 debut novel White Teeth depicts the Bengali Muslim Samad Iqbal and his English friend Archie Jones, who both live in London. Samad's son Magid becomes an atheist scientist who joins Marcus Chalfen's project to develop a genetically modified "FutureMouse," while Magid's twin brother Millat joins a Muslim fundamentalist group called KEVIN (Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation). Both twins sleep with Archie's daughter, Irie. Smith's other novels include NW, which takes place in northwest London; Swing Time, which describes a troubled dancer named Tracey; and the academic novel On Beauty, which is loosely based on E. M. Forster's novel Howards End.
Caliban, from The Tempest
Caliban is the son of the Algerian witch Sycorax, who once ruled the island where Caliban was born. After Sycorax died the island fell under the control of the magician Prospero, an exiled duke of Milan. Prospero taught the young Caliban language, and showed kindness to him, until Caliban tried to rape Prospero's daughter Miranda. In response, Prospero enslaved Caliban, and began treating him as a subhuman creature. (Caliban's exact nature is unknown, but he seems to be physically distinct from the other characters in the play. At various points, Caliban is called a "monster," a "demi-devil," a "strange fish," a "thing of darkness," a "moon-calf," and a "freckled whelp" who lacks a "human shape.") When the play begins, Caliban longs to overthrow Prospero but still fears Prospero's magic, which is stronger than that of Caliban's god, Setebos. Trinculo and Stephano, two drunkards who are shipwrecked and separated from the rest of their crew, give Caliban liquor; Caliban then conspires with them to kill Prospero. When the group hears music played by the spirit Ariel, Caliban delivers a speech beginning "Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises" that demonstrates sensitivity and loss. The plot to unseat Prospero quickly fails, and Caliban vows to be "wise hereafter." Unlike Ariel, Caliban is not freed at the end of the play
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tennessee Williams, 1955)
Centers on a fight between two sons (Gooper and Brick) over the estate of father "Big Daddy" Pollitt, who is dying of cancer. After his friend Skipper dies, ex-football star Brick turns to alcohol and will not have sex with his wife Maggie ("the cat"). Yet Maggie announces to Big Daddy that she is pregnant in an attempt to force a reconciliation with--and win the inheritance for--Brick.
Vedas
Consist strictly of four hymnbooks: the Rig (prayers in verse), Sama (musical melodies), Yajur (prose prayers), and Atharva (spells and incantations). Each Veda, though, also contains a Brahmana (interpretation), and the Vedas also incorporate treatises on meditation (Aranyakas) as well as the Upanishads. Written in an archaic form of Sanskrit by early Aryan invaders, possibly between 1500 and 1200 BC, the Vedas concentrate on sacrifices to deities, such as Indra (god of thunder), Varuna (cosmic order), and Agni (fire). The major gods Vishnu and Shiva appear as minor deities in the Vedas; their elevation, as well as the concept of karma, does not develop until the Upanishads.
David Copperfield (1850)
Dickens's favorite of his own books, and the most autobiographical. After David's father dies, his mother marries the cruel Mr. Murdstone. David is sent to a school where he is tormented by the headmaster Creakle, but finds comfort in his friendships with Tommy Traddles and James Steerforth. While working in London, David befriends the optimistic but indebted Mr. Micawber. Eventually, David escapes his grim warehouse job by walking to Dover. There, he finds his great-aunt Betsey Trotwood, who arranges for David to be educated by the lawyer Mr. Wickfield. David keeps in touch with his old nurse Clara Peggotty, whose relative "Little Em'ly" is seduced and abandoned by David's former friend Steerforth. Youthful infatuation causes David to wed the flighty Dora Spenlow, who eventually dies. After helping to extricate Mr. Wickfield from the schemes of the "humble" clerk Uriah Heep, David marries Mr. Wickfield's daughter Agnes. Throughout the story, David progresses in the literary world, ultimately becoming a successful novelist.
George Orwell (1903-1950, United Kingdom)
George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair) condemned the totalitarian government of Joseph Stalin in the fantasy Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell's speculative fiction was part of a wide-ranging body of work that also included attacks on British colonialism (the essay "Shooting an Elephant" and the novel Burmese Days), first-hand accounts of war (Homage to Catalonia) and poverty (Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier), and works of cultural criticism (the essay "Politics and the English Language"). After taking part in the Spanish Civil War and growing alarmed at the authoritarian nature of Russian communism, Orwell wrote the 1945 novel Animal Farm as an allegory of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Animal Farm describes barnyard animals who revolt against their owner, and try to create a more equitable society under the leadership of the pig Snowball, who develops principles of "Animalism" such as "Four legs good, two legs bad." However, Snowball is soon ousted by his fellow pig Napoleon, who exploits the other animals, sends the horse Boxer to be slaughtered, and degrades the principles of Animalism to "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Four years later, Orwell imagined a future Britain subsumed into Oceania, a superpower under the harsh rule of "Big Brother", in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston Smith and his lover Julia try to rebel against Big Brother, but are tortured into compliance in the Ministry of Love. Nineteen Eighty-Four also described the distortion of the English language for political purposes ("Newspeak"), and introduced many words and phrases that are still used with reference to oppressive governments (thoughtcrime, doublethink, memory hole, "we've always been at war with Eastasia," "war is peace," "Big Brother is watching you").
Herbert George Wells (1866-1946, United Kingdom)
H. G. Wells used speculative fiction to explore the social issues of his day from a left-wing perspective. In the 1895 novella The Time Machine, Wells wrote about a "Time Traveller" who visits the year AD 802,701, and learns that humanity has diverged into two different species—the surface-dwelling Eloi, who are gentle and beautiful but intellectually limited, and the subterranean Morlocks, who resemble apes but are strong and clever enough to use the Eloi as livestock. The Time Traveller speculates that the Eloi are descended from aristocrats who were once served by the ancestors of the Morlocks. After writing about time travel, Wells helped to establish another of science fiction's key themes by depicting an alien invasion in the 1897 novel The War of the Worlds. The anonymous narrator of The War of the Worlds observes a Martian spaceship that lands in Surrey, and flees the "Tripods" and "Black Smoke" that the Martians use as weapons in the conquest of Earth. The invaders easily overcome human resistance, but eventually perish from lack of immunity to Earth microbes. Wells also wrote several novels about researchers who use science to pursue unethical goals. In the 1896 Wells novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, the shipwrecked Edward Prendick discovers that the title vivisectionist performs painful experiments to transform animals into human-like "Beast Folk." A year later Wells published The Invisible Man, which centers on a student of physics named Griffin who plans to use his invisibility to enact a "reign of terror." However, Griffin's invisibility makes it difficult for him to exist in society (he must cover himself with clothes and thick bandages if he wishes to be seen), and he is eventually killed by an angry crowd.
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725)
He was Japan's first professional dramatist. Originally named Sugimori Nobumori, Chikamatsu wrote more than 150 plays for both the bunraku (puppet theater) and the kabuki (popular theater). Chikamatsu's scripts fall into two categories: historical romances (mono) and domestic tragedies (wamono). One of Chikamatsu's most popular plays was The Battles of Coxinga, an historical melodrama about an attempt to re-establish the Ming dynasty in China. He is also largely responsible for developing the sewamono (contemporary drama on contemporary themes) in the joruri, a style of chanted narration adapted to bunraku.
Mishima Yukio (1925-1970), a pseudonym of Hiraoka Kimitake
He was a novelist whose central theme was the disparity between traditional Japanese values and the spiritual emptiness of modern life. He failed to qualify for military service during World War II, so worked in an aircraft factory instead. Mishima's first novel, Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no kokuhaku), was successful enough to allow him to write full-time. His four-volume epic The Sea of Fertility (Hojo no umi, consisting of Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, and The Decay of the Angel), is about self-destructive personalities and the transformation of Japan into a modern, but sterile, society. Mishima, who organized the Tate no kai — a right-wing society stressing physical fitness and the martial arts — committed ritual suicide after a public speech failed to galvanize the armed forces into overthrowing the government.
Talmud
Hebrew for "instruction," the Talmud is a codification of Jewish oral law, based on the Torah. It consists of the Mishnah (the laws themselves), and the Gemara (scholarly commentary on the Mishnah). The Gemara developed in two Judaic centers, Palestine and Babylonia, so there are two Talmuds (Palestinian and Babylonian), the latter considered more authoritative. Rabbis and lay scholars finished the Babylonian Talmud around 600.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was a Russian-American author.
His 1955 novel Lolita depicts Humbert Humbert's obsession with the adolescent Ramsdale resident Dolores Haze, whom Humbert nicknames "Lolita." Humbert becomes Lolita's stepfather by marrying her mother Charlotte, who soon dies. Lolita and Humbert travel the U.S. before Humbert enrolls Lolita at the Beardsley School for Girls. There, Lolita is cast in a play written by Clare Quilty, and devises a plan of escape. In Nabokov's highly meta-fictional novel Pale Fire, a 999-line poem of the same name by John Shade is the subject of a lengthy commentary by the scholar Charles Kinbote. However, Kinbote's notes are more concerned with himself than with the poem, revealing that he thinks of himself as King Charles, the exiled monarch of the land of Zembla. Nabokov's other books include the novels Ada, or Ardor, which recounts an incestuous relationship; Invitation to a Beheading, about the condemned prisoner Cincinnatus, and The Defense, a Russian-language novel about the chess player Aleksandr Luzhin. In his memoir Speak, Memory, Nabokov wrote about his wife Vera and his scientific interest in butterflies.
Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927)
His mother died insane while he was a child, and his father was a failure who gave him up to relatives. Despite this inauspicious childhood, his 1915 short story "Rashomon" brought him into the highest literary circles and started him writing the macabre stories for which he is known. In 1927 he committed suicide by overdosing on pills, and his suicide letter "A Note to a Certain Old Friend" became a published work. "Rashomon" also was key to his international fame, as in 1951 Kurosawa Akira made a film entitled Rashomon, though the film's plot is more based on Akutagawa's other short story "In a Grove." One of Japan's two most prestigious literary prizes is named for Akutagawa; it is awarded for the best serious work of fiction by a new Japanese writer.
Iago, from The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice
Iago is the "ancient," or standard-bearer, of the general Othello, and is passed over for a promotion to lieutenant in favor of the less-experienced Michael Cassio. In addition, Iago believes that his wife, Emilia, may have cheated on him with Othello. Consequently, Iago vows revenge. At the start of the play, Iago and his associate Roderigo alert the Venetian senator Brabantio that Brabantio's daughter, Desdemona, has eloped with Othello. After Desdemona testifies that she married Othello willingly, the Duke of Venice places Othello in charge of defending Cyprus. On the island, Iago ingratiates himself with Othello, and deceitfully warns the general against the "green-eyed monster" of jealousy. Iago then places Desdemona's handkerchief in Cassio's room, causing Othello to believe that Desdemona and Cassio are having an affair. Once Othello has murdered Desdemona, Emilia exposes Iago's plot. Before killing himself, Othello stabs Iago, who survives to be arrested by Cassio.
Italo Calvino (1923-1985)
Italian author. In his 1979 novel If on a winter's night a traveler, the even-numbered sections are presented as the first chapters of a number of different books, each of which breaks off abruptly at a climactic moment. The odd-numbered sections are addressed in the second person to "You," the reader of "Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler." You and a fellow book-lover named Ludmilla investigate oddities in the novels you are reading, in the process encountering a best-selling author named Silas Flannery, the deceitful translator Ermes Marana, and a scholar of Cimmerian literature named Professor Uzzi-Tuzii. Calvino's novel Invisible Cities is framed as a conversation between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, who describes 55 fictional cities to the Mongol ruler. Calvino is also known for his fantastical short stories, some of which are collected in the volume Cosmicomics and narrated by an ancient being named Qfwfq.
Sei Shonagan (c. 966 - c. 1013)
Like Lady Murasaki, Sei Shonagan was a lady-in-waiting of the Empress. Since Lady Murasaki and Sei Shonagan were contemporaries and known for their wit, they were often rivals. Sei Shonagan's only work is the Pillow Book (Makura no soshi), which is considered the best source of information about life at the Japanese court during the Heian period (784-1185)
The Crucible (Arthur Miller, 1953)
Miller chose the 1692 Salem witch trials as his setting, but the work is really an allegorical protest against the McCarthy anti-Communist "witch-hunts" of the early 1950s. In the story, Elizabeth Proctor fires servant Abigail Williams after she finds out Abigail had an affair with her husband. In response, Abigail accuses Elizabeth of witchcraft. She stands trial and is acquitted, but then another girl accuses her husband, John, and as he refuses to turn in others, he is killed, along with the old comic figure, Giles Corey. Also notable: Judge Hawthorne is a direct ancestor of the author Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Oe Kenzaburo (1935-present)
Novelist and recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. His first work, Shiiku (The Catch in the Shadow of the Sunrise), describes a friendship between a Japanese boy and a black American POW, and won him the Akutagawa award while he was still a student. His early works are filled with insanity, abuse, perverse relations, and violence, but his later works — including A Personal Matter (Kojinteki-na taiken) and The Silent Cry (Man'en gannen no futtoboru) — reflect the experience of being the father of a brain-damaged child. His fiction centers on the alienation following Japan's surrender, and his political writings focus on the search for cultural and ideological roots
Lady Murasaki Shikibu (c. 978 -c. 1015)
Novelist, diarist, and lady-in-waiting. She was the author of the Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari), the first known novel; the diary Murasaki Shikibu nikki; and a collection of tanka poems. The daughter of the court official Fujiwara Tametoki, she sat in on the classical Chinese literature lessons that her brother received, in spite of the Heian traditions against higher education for women.
Long Day's Journey Into Night (Eugene O'Neill, 1956).
O'Neill wrote it fifteen years earlier and presented the manuscript to his third wife with instructions that it not be produced until 25 years after his death. Actually produced three years after he died, it centers on Edmund and the rest of the Tyrone family, but is really an autobiographical account of the dysfunction of O'Neill's own family, set on one day in August 1912. The father is a miserly actor, while the mother is a morphine addict, and the brother is a drunk; they argue and cut each other down throughout the play.
Margaret Atwood (1939-present, Canada)
One of Canada's most prominent authors of literary fiction, Atwood has written multiple works that combine speculative elements with psychological realism. In 1985 Atwood published The Handmaid's Tale, which portrays a dystopian near-future in which the United States has been replaced by the patriarchal Republic of Gilead. The Handmaid's Tale is narrated by Offred, whose role as a "handmaid" is to bear children for "the Commander" and his wife, Serena Joy. Offred flees her oppressive existence with the help of Nick, a chauffeur who claims to be a member of the underground Mayday resistance movement. In an epilogue set in the year 2195, the archivist Professor Pieixoto discusses Offred's unknown fate. Atwood later wrote a trilogy set in a post-apocalyptic world where corporations have created bioengineered diseases and people (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam). In addition to her speculative works, Atwood has also written historical fiction (Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin, the latter of which contains a character who is a science fiction author), novels about the relationships between female friends (Cat's Eye and The Robber Bride), and a retelling of Homer's Odyssey from a female point of view (The Penelopiad).
Oresteia (Aeschylus, c. 458 BC)
Originally a four-play cycle, only three works (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides) survive. (A "satyr play" entitled Proteus has been lost.) Agamemnon, the first play in the trilogy, describes the murder of Agamemnon and his concubine Cassandra by Agamemnon's adulterous wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. The Libation Bearers continues the story, describing how Agamemnon's children, Orestes and Electra, avenge their father by murdering Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. However, the Furies relentlessly pursue Orestes for his matricide, leading to the events of The Eumenides. In this third play, Orestes appeals to Athena, who organizes a trial for him (with Apollo as a defense counsel). Ultimately, when Apollo argues that the man is more important than the woman in a marriage, Orestes is acquitted, and the Furies are renamed the Eumenides, or "The Kindly Ones." The cycle has been retold numerous times in modern literature, notably by Eugene O'Neill in Mourning Becomes Electra and by Jean-Paul Sartre in The Flies.
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
Paris and London are the title cities of this novel, which famously begins "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." At the start of the novel, the French doctor Alexandre Manette is released after 18 years in the Bastille, where he was imprisoned to prevent him from revealing the crimes of the Evrémonde family. Dr. Manette relocates to England with the help of his daughter Lucie and the Tellson's Bank employee Jarvis Lorry. Lucie marries Charles Darnay, a Frenchman who bears a striking resemblance to the English lawyer Sidney Carton. Darnay is also a member of the Evrémonde family. After returning to Paris during the French Revolution, Darnay is arrested as the result of a vendetta against the Evrémondes waged by the Defarges, a proletarian couple who encode information about their enemies into Madame Defarge's knitting. Carton expresses his love for Lucie by taking Darnay's place in jail, and goes to the guillotine thinking "it is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done." Lucie and Darnay escape with the help of the governess Miss Pross, who shoots Madame Defarge.
The Glass Menagerie (Tennessee Williams, 1944)
Partly based on Williams' own family, the drama is narrated by Tom Wingfield, who supports his mother Amanda and his crippled sister Laura (who takes refuge from reality in her glass animals). At Amanda's insistence, Tom brings his friend Jim O'Connor to the house as a "gentleman caller" for Laura. While O'Connor is there, the horn on Laura's glass unicorn breaks, bringing her into reality, until O'Connor tells the family that he is already engaged. Laura returns to her fantasy world, while Tom abandons the family after fighting with Amanda.
Tao Te Ching (or The Way and Its Power)
Philosophical text behind Daoism, a religion-philosophy founded by the semi-legendary Lao Tzu in the sixth century BC, though scholars now believe it was written about 200 years later, during the Warring States period of the late Zhou dynasty. The Tao Te Ching instructs adherents in restraint and passiveness, allowing the natural order of the universe to take precedent.
Apocrypha
Protestants and Jews assign lower authority to the Apocrypha because it was written between 300 and 100 BC, but Catholics and Orthodox Christians consider the books that make up the Apocrypha to be "deuterocanonical," meaning that they are just as important and divinely-inspired as other parts of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. "Apocryphal" in general means "something outside an accepted canon," and, in particular, in ancient Greek it meant "hidden things." Denominations differ as to which books make up the Apocrypha, but Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch are almost always included.
Proteus, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Proteus begins the play as an innocent lover, but develops into the primary antagonist after he visits his friend Valentine in Milan, and becomes infatuated with Valentine's love, Silvia. Although Proteus has sworn that he will be faithful to a woman in Verona named Julia, he breaks his promise and tries to win Silvia for himself. To this end, Proteus betrays Valentine by telling Silvia's father, the duke, that Valentine and Silvia plan to elope. After the duke exiles Valentine, Silvia rejects Proteus because of his treachery towards his friend, and his unfaithfulness to Julia. When Silvia escapes to the woods to find Valentine, Proteus follows her and rescues her from outlaws. Silvia continues to reject Proteus, who threatens to rape her ("I'll force thee yield to my desire") before Valentine intervenes. Proteus repents, and Julia — who has been disguised as Proteus's male page — reveals herself. Proteus then reunites with Julia and resumes his friendship with Valentine, whom the duke permits to marry Silvia.
Book of Mormon
Published in 1830 by the founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith. Mormons believe that the prophet Moroni revealed the location of the Book of Mormon to Smith, and then Smith translated it from a "reformed Egyptian" language. The Book of Mormon is inscribed on thin gold plates, and documents the history of a group of Hebrews who migrated to America around 600 BC. This group divided into two tribes: the Lamanites (ancestors of American Indians), and the highly civilized Nephites, a chosen people instructed by Jesus but killed by the Lamanites around AD 421.
The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins
Rachel Verinder's 18th birthday party is marred by the theft of the Moonstone, a sacred gem plundered from India that Rachel had just inherited. Suspicion falls on a trio of Indian jugglers, but also on Rachel herself, who behaves oddly and breaks off her engagement with Franklin Blake when Franklin leads the search. The maid Rosanna Spearman is also suspected, especially after she commits suicide by jumping into quicksand. Local inspector Sergeant Cuff cannot solve the mystery, but one year later, Franklin returns from abroad and learns that Rosanna, who was secretly in love with him, began impeding the investigation after a paint smudge made her suspect he was the thief. Franklin then meets with Rachel, who claims she saw Franklin steal the Moonstone but never told anyone to save their reputations. Eventually, Franklin learns that he was secretly fed laudanum at the party by Dr. Candy, and while in a drugged stupor took the Moonstone to protect it. The Moonstone later turns up for sale, upon which it is stolen by the trio of Indians. The Indians also kill the seller, who is revealed to be Godfrey Ablewhite, another party guest whose personal debts prompted him to keep the Moonstone when the drugged Franklin gave it to him. Other characters who narrate portions of the book include Miss Drusilla Clack, an Evangelical who constantly hands out moralizing tracts; Gabriel Betteredge, a servant obsessed with Robinson Crusoe; and Dr. Candy's opium-addicted assistant Ezra Jennings, an odd man with multi-colored hair.
Kawabata Yasunari (1899-1972)
Recipient of the 1968 Nobel Prize for Literature, he was the first Japanese author to win the Nobel. His works combine classic Japanese values with modern trends, and often center on the role of relations in people's lives. His works are often only a few pages long, a form given the name "palm-of-the-hand." He is best known for three novels: Thousand Cranes, based on the tea ceremony and inspired by The Tale of Genji; The Sound of the Mountain, about the relationship of an old man and his daughter-in-law; and Snow Country, about an aging geisha. A friend of Mishima Yukio, he was also associated with right-wing causes and openly protested the Cultural Revolution in China. He committed suicide two years after Mishima.
Regan and the Duke of Cornwall, and Goneril and the Duke of Albany, from King Lear
Regan and Goneril are the elderly King Lear's two evil daughters. After Lear bequeaths his kingdom to them, they conspire to undermine Lear's remaining power and defeat Cordelia, Lear's sole loyal daughter. Angered by the treatment that he has received from his heirs, Lear leaves Regan's home in the middle of a thunderstorm. Gloucester, who desires Lear's reinstatement, aids Cordelia's invading army; he is exposed, and Regan and Cornwall gouge Gloucester's eyes out. While Albany and Cornwall arrange their armies to fight Cordelia, Regan and Goneril both romantically pursue the villainous Edmund. This love triangle results in Goneril killing Regan with poison. Goneril also tries to have Albany killed, but commits suicide when the plot is exposed. Cordelia is captured and executed, and Lear dies of grief soon afterward, leaving the redeemed Albany and Edmund's half-brother Edgar to take charge of the realm
Avesta (or Zend-Avesta)
Sacred scripture of Zoroastrianism. It consists of five parts: Gathas (poems written by Zoroaster), Visparat (homages to spiritual leaders), Vendidad (legal and medical doctrine), Yashts (hymns to angels and heroes), and Khurda (lesser rituals and hymns). The Gathas may be as old as the 7th century BC, when Zoroaster is thought to have lived, but most of the Avesta was put together by the Sassanid Persian dynasty, between 200 and 640. Zoroastrianism centers on the eternal struggle between a good entity (Ahura Mazda, or Ormuzd) and its evil counterpart (Angra Mainyu, or Ahriman); the religion is still practiced by about 120,000 Parsees in Bombay and a few thousand adherents in Iran and Iraq.
The Pickwick Papers (1837)
The London gentleman Samuel Pickwick, the president of his namesake "club," sets out with fellow members Nathaniel Winkle, Tracy Tupman, and Augustus Snodgrass on a series of coach journeys to sites in provincial England. While on their travels, the Pickwickians foil the attempt of Alfred Jingle to elope with Rachael Wardle of Dingley Dell. Pickwick also befriends and employs the Cockney valet Sam Weller, who is known for grotesquely humorous sayings such as "out with it, as the father said to his child, when he swallowed a farthing."
The Final Problem (1893) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Sherlock Holmes stories made Doyle a celebrity, but Doyle, feeling cheapened by the work, decided to kill off Holmes in this story. The story begins with Watson welcoming in a bleeding Holmes, who recounts that Professor Moriarty—Holmes's alleged archnemesis, despite first appearing in this story—has just tried to kill Holmes via a staged car accident, a falling brick, and an armed thug. Holmes plans to go to Europe to defeat Moriarty without alerting him; however, despite Holmes disguising himself as an Italian priest and giving Watson circuitous instructions, Moriarty tails them by rail, though Holmes and Watson evade him. In Strasbourg, Holmes learns that Scotland Yard has busted Moriarty's organization but have failed to catch the man himself, leading Holmes to continue to Switzerland. During a hike to the Reichenbach Falls, a messenger tells Watson that a sick woman at their hotel needs a doctor; Holmes knows this is a trap laid by Moriarty but says nothing. Finding no such woman, Watson rushes back to the falls, where footprints and signs of a struggle convince him that Moriarty found Holmes and, during a fight, both fatally tumbled over the waterfall.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee, 1962).
The author Virginia Woolf has little to do with the story, except that Martha sings the title to George when she is mad at him in Act I. In fact, Albee got the title from graffiti he saw on a men's room wall. In the drama, George is a professor who married Martha, the college president's daughter, but the two dislike each other. Martha invites another couple, the instructor Nick and his wife Honey, for drinks after a party for her father. All four of them get drunk, and they end up bickering over their flawed marriages: Besides George and Martha's problems, Honey is barren, and Nick married her for her money.
Yijing (or I Ching or Book of Changes)
The basis for ancient Chinese philosophy and religion, the Yijing was created between 1500 and 1000 BC, though legend has it that the dragon-emperor Fuxi derived its eight trigrams from a turtle shell. The trigrams consist of three either broken (yin) or unbroken (yang) lines, and by reading pairs of these trigrams randomly, one could learn about humans, the universe, and the meaning of life. The Qin emperor Shi Huangdi burned most scholarly books, but the Yijing escaped because it was not seen as threatening
A Christmas Carol (1843)
The cold-hearted miser Ebenezer Scrooge is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley. Marley's ghost, who wears heavy chains made of cash boxes and other symbols of greed, tells Scrooge to expect the arrival of three spirits. During a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past, Scrooge is shown a holiday party given by his former employer Mr. Fezziwig, and is taken back to the moment when his fiancée Belle left him on account of his avarice. The Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to the homes of his nephew Fred and his clerk Bob Cratchit, whose son Tiny Tim is near death. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge the grave of an unloved man—Scrooge himself. Scrooge has a change of heart, celebrates Christmas, and becomes a benefactor to the Cratchit family, preventing Tiny Tim from dying.
Great Expectations (1861)
The narrator Philip Pirrip, who is nicknamed "Pip," is brought up by his sister and her kind husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery. While visiting a churchyard, Pip meets the escaped convict Abel Magwitch, and renders him aid. Later, Pip is hired to "play" with a girl named Estella at Satis House, whose owner Miss Havisham was spurned on her wedding day and has worn a wedding dress ever since. When the lawyer Mr. Jaggers reveals that a mysterious benefactor will fund Pip's education, Pip assumes that Miss Havisham is making him a "gentleman" so that he can marry Estella. Instead, Estella marries the wealthy Bentley Drummle, who mistreats her. Pip discovers that his benefactor was actually the convict Magwitch, and tries to help Magwitch flee England with the help of Pip's friends Startop and Herbert Pocket. However, the escape is foiled by Compeyson, the man who jilted Miss Havisham. Pip's great expectations are dashed, but he becomes a better person, and is finally reunited with the widowed Estella. Dickens modified the novel's conclusion at the suggestion of the author Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who objected to an ending in which Estella weds another man.
Oliver Twist (1838)
The orphan Oliver is brought up in a workhouse, where he horrifies the beadle Mr. Bumble by asking for more food. Oliver is then apprenticed to the undertaker Mr. Sowerberry. After fighting with the bully Noah Claypole, Oliver runs away to London. On the road he meets the pickpocket Jack Dawkins, known as the "Artful Dodger," who leads him to the den of the criminal Fagin. A kindly gentleman named Mr. Brownlow temporarily rescues Oliver, but he is returned to Fagin by the cruel Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. During an attempt to rob a house, Oliver is shot. He is tended by an occupant of the house named Rose Maylie, who eventually learns that Oliver is being plotted against by his villainous half-brother, Monks. The novel ends happily, as Oliver's chief enemies die or emigrate, and he is left in the care of Mr. Brownlow and Rose, who is revealed to be his aunt.
The Purloined Letter (1844) by Edgar Allan Poe
The police prefect "G" asks for Dupin's help regarding a devious official known as "Minister D." G believes the minister stole a letter that contains potential blackmail fodder regarding an unnamed but powerful man, and thus a huge reward is offered. However, the police cannot find the letter in Minister D's lodgings or on his person. One month later, "G" contacts Dupin again after the reward increases to 50,000 francs; Dupin asks for the reward immediately and amazingly produces the letter. Dupin, using a metaphor about a map game—in which players tasked with finding a name on a map can easily overlook large-print names—says Minister D hid the letter in plain sight, putting it amongst a bundle on the mantle. Once hearing of the theft, Dupin went to the apartment, located the letter, and then created a diversion so he could swap the letter with a taunting fake.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester, from Richard III
The quintessential antihero, Richard describes how his hunchbacked appearance has made him "determined to prove a villain" in a monologue that begins "now is the winter of our discontent / made glorious summer by this son of York." In the aftermath of a Yorkist victory in the Wars of the Roses, Richard plots against his brothers King Edward IV and George, Duke of Clarence, and causes Edward to imprison Clarence in the Tower of London. Assassins sent by Richard later kill Clarence, who is drowned in a "malmsey-butt," or cask of wine. Richard also marries and kills the Lady Anne, and orders the deaths of Edward's children (the "princes in the tower"). Although Richard becomes king, he soon faces a rebellion led by Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. On the eve of a battle at Bosworth Field, Richard is haunted by the ghosts of those he wronged. The battle turns against Richard (who cries "a horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!"), and Richmond is crowned as King Henry VII of England.
Zeami (1363-1443), also called Kanze Motokiyo
The second master of the Kanze theatrical school, which had been founded by his father, he is regarded as the greatest playwright of the No theater. He provided 90 of the approximately 230 plays in the modern repertoire. Among his best works are Atsumori, The Robe of Feathers, Birds of Sorrow, and Wind in the Pines. Also a drama critic, he established the aesthetic standards by which plays have been judged ever since. His Fushi kaden (The Transmission of the Flower of Acting Style) is a manual for his pupils.
Lysistrata (Aristophanes, c. 411 BC)
The title character of this comedy is an Athenian woman who decides to end the Peloponnesian War, which was still ongoing when the play premiered in 411 BC. At the beginning of the play, Lysistrata assembles a secret "Council of Women," whose members represent many different regions of Greece. Once the women have gathered, Lysistrata reveals her proposal: all Greek women should abstain from having sex until the men agree to stop fighting. Although Lysistrata's plan draws protests from her bawdy neighbor Calonice, and from the amorous wife Myrrhine, the Spartan Lampito reluctantly supports the idea, and helps to convince the other women. As Athenian women capture the Acropolis, the female representatives from other regions return home to enlist their compatriots in the plan. The ensuing events include conflicts between a chorus of old women and a chorus of old men, and a personal plea to Myrrhine from her husband, Cinesias. Both genders suffer from sexual deprivation, but the women of Greece remain united. With the aid of a beautiful girl called Diallage, or Reconciliation, Lysistrata convinces the frenzied men to agree to an equitable peace.
The Old Curiosity Shop (1841)
Thirteen-year-old Nell Trent goes to live with her grandfather, a gambling addict who owns a London shop filled with mysterious and horrible objects. His gambling causes him to lose the shop to the evil dwarfish moneylender Daniel Quilp. Nell's older brother Frederick plots to marry her off to Dick Swiveller to get a share of a supposed treasure trove, but Dick eventually marries a servant girl nicknamed "the Marchioness" instead. A major subplot concerns Quilp's efforts to frame a boy named Kit Nubbles for theft. At the end of the novel, Quilp drowns, and Nell dies shortly before her grandfather also passes away.
Medea (Euripides, c. 431 BC)
This Euripides play retells the myth of Medea, a sorceress from Colchis who saved Jason and the Argonauts during their quest for the Golden Fleece. Set after the Argonauts' quest, the play depicts Medea's vengeance against Jason as he prepares to marry the Corinthian princess Glauce. Medea uses poisoned robes to kill Glauce and Glauce's father Creon (a different character than the Creon who appears in Sophocles's Theban plays). Not content with this, Medea seeks to hurt Jason further by killing the sons that she bore him. When Jason tries to confront Medea, she appears above the stage in a chariot pulled by dragons, and exchanges bitter words with her former lover before departing to seek refuge with King Aegeus of Athens. The play's ending is a classic example of a deus ex machina, a literary device in which plot problems are suddenly resolved by an unexpected contrivance.
The Maltese Falcon (1930) by Dashiell Hammett.
This classic of the "hard-boiled" genre follows Sam Spade, a San Francisco private eye hired by "Ms. Wonderly" to tail Floyd Thursby, with whom her sister has eloped. The next day, Sam's partner Miles Archer is found dead, shot by Thursby, who is also dead. The cops suspect Spade, who is sleeping with Archer's wife. Spade learns that "Ms. Wonderly" is actually Brigid O'Shaughnessy, a woman hunting for a priceless statuette called the Maltese Falcon alongside the obese Caspar Gutman and a homorelationsual Middle Easterner named Joel Cairo. At a private meeting in which Gutman explains how Brigid, Thursby, and Cairo found the Falcon in Constantinople, Spade suddenly faints, having been drugged by Gutman. Spade returns to his office, where a ship captain gives him a package containing the falcon, then dies. Brigid calls, urgently requesting Spade's help, but Spade returns home only to find Brigid, Gutman, and Cairo waiting, demanding the Falcon. Spade reminds them that one of them will be pegged for the murders, and they turn on each other. Gutman decides his bodyguard, Wilmer, will be the patsy, but when they discover the Falcon is a fake, Wilmer escapes. Cairo and Gutman leave to find the real Falcon, but Spade doesn't let Brigid go, certain she cannot be trusted. She confesses she shot both Archer and Thursby but is in love with Spade; Spade, refusing to "play the sap" for her, turns her over to the cops, who report that Wilmer has just murdered Gutman. The novel's 1941 film adaptation, starring Humphrey Bogart, is considered a film noir masterpiece.
The Frogs (Aristophanes, c. 405 BC)
This comedy centers on the god Dionysus, who journeys to the underworld with his much smarter slave Xanthias. Dionysus is unhappy with the low quality of contemporary theater, and plans to bring the playwright Euripides back from the dead. As the ferryman Charon rows Dionysus to the underworld (Xanthias is forced to walk), a chorus of the title creatures appears and repeatedly chants the phrase "Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax." Dionysus and Xanthias then have a series of misadventures, during which they alternately claim to be Heracles. Finally, the two find Euripides arguing with the playwright Aeschylus as to which is the better author. After the dramatists "weigh" their verses on a scale, and offer advice on how to save the city of Athens, Dionysus judges that it is Aeschylus who should be brought back to life.
The Clouds (Aristophanes, c. 423 BC)
This comedy lampoons Athenian philosophers, especially Socrates and his Sophist followers, whose insubstantial, obfuscating arguments are inspired by the title goddesses. The protagonist, Strepsiades, fears that his horse-obsessed son, Pheidippides, is spending too much money. Consequently, Strepsiades wants Pheidippides to enroll in the Phrontisterion, or "Thinkery" of Socrates to learn specious arguments that can be used to avoid paying debts. Pheidippides refuses, so Strepsiades enrolls in the Thinkery himself. There, Strepsiades learns about new discoveries, such as a technique to measure how far a flea can jump. Eventually Pheidippides is also pressured into studying at the Thinkery, where he and Strepsiades are instructed by the beings Just and Unjust Discourse. Strepsiades believes that the education will enable Pheidippides to foil all creditors, but Pheidippides instead uses his new-found debating skills to justify beating up his father. In response, Strepsiades leads a mob to destroy the Thinkery.
Bleak House (1853)
This novel revolves around the Chancery case Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which has dragged on for many years as family members fight over an inheritance. The title home (which is actually pleasant, rather than bleak) is owned by John Jarndyce, who cares for his young relatives Richard Carstone and Ada Clare. Ada has a companion named Esther Summerson, who narrates much of the novel, and is Dickens's only female narrator. Esther suffers a severe illness after caring for a sick boy named Jo, and learns that she is the illegitimate daughter of Lady Dedlock. The lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn discovers Lady Dedlock's secret but is murdered by the maid Hortense, a crime that is investigated by Inspector Bucket. Lady Dedlock dies after fleeing home and the Chancery suit ends, as the disputed inheritance has been totally consumed by court costs. Other memorable characters in the novel include the merchant Krook, who dies of spontaneous human combustion; Mrs. Jellyby, who busies herself with charitable causes but neglects her own family, and Horace Skimpole, whose blithe irresponsibility burdens others.
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
This novel was the first Holmes story to appear after "The Final Problem." Holmes is solicited by James Mortimer, whose friend Charles Baskerville recently died in terror, with nearby canine footprints consistent with a myth about a hellish hound who kills Baskerville heirs. The next heir, Henry, is almost shot by a bearded pursuer in London, leading Holmes to send Watson to Baskerville Hall to protect Henry while he investigates. At the estate on the moors, Watson learns that two neighbors, the Stapleton siblings, are behaving oddly, as are the Baskerville servants, the Barrymores, and Laura Lyons, the woman Charles was supposed to meet the night of his death. Watson learns that Mr. Barrymore is skulking around to secretly aid his brother, an escaped convict, and discovers through Laura that a shadowy figure walking the moors at night is actually Holmes, laying low. Holmes discovers that Laura was used by Jack Stapleton to lure Charles onto the moors, where Stapleton—a distant heir of the Baskervilles—killed Charles with his huge pet dog. Holmes and Watson then use Henry as bait; the ruse works, and they kill Stapleton's dog, who has been painted with phosphorus to appear spectral. Stapleton drowns in the Grimpen Mire while fleeing, and Holmes and Watson learn Stapleton's supposed "sister" is actually his wife, who refused to help her villainous husband.
Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller, 1949)
This play questions American values of success. Willy Loman is a failed salesman whose firm fires him after 34 years. Despite his own failures, he desperately wants his sons Biff and Happy to succeed. Told in a series of flashbacks, the story points to Biff's moment of hopelessness, when the former high school star catches his father Willy cheating on his mother, Linda. Eventually, Willy can no longer live with his perceived shortcomings, and commits suicide in an attempt to leave Biff with insurance money.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) by Edgar Allan Poe
This story marks the debut of C. Auguste Dupin, the predecessor of many future literary genius detectives. The unnamed narrator begins by musing on the unique mental challenges presented by the games of chess and whist, and then recalls how Dupin was once able to practically read the narrator's mind regarding an actor named Chantilly. Both the narrator and Dupin then read newspaper accounts of the murders of two women; the daughter was strangled and stuffed up a chimney, while the mother had her throat slashed so deep by a razor (also found at the scene) that her head falls off when she is moved. Neighbors testify they heard two voices but one was unidentifiable. Bags of money at the scene lead to the arrest of local banker Le Bon; Dupin deduces that, because the money remains, Le Bon is innocent and robbery is not the motive. Offering his services to a police prefect known as "G," Dupin notes the extreme strength required of both murders, the odd language, and tufts of hair. He realizes the murderer was non-human and places a newspaper ad for a missing orangutan. A sailor confesses to the crime: he bought an orangutan in Borneo but could not control it, and when he got angry that the orangutan grabbed the razor and mimicked the sailor's daily shave, the orangutan ran off in a bestial rage and killed the two women.
Oedipus Rex (Sophocles, c. 429 BC, also known by its translated title Oedipus the King)
This tragedy tells the story of Oedipus, a man who became king of Thebes by defeating a monster called the sphinx. After a mysterious plague devastates Thebes, Oedipus sends his brother-in-law Creon to ask the Oracle at Delphi about the cause of the affliction. The Oracle attributes the plague to the fact that the murderer of Laius, the previous king of Thebes, has never been caught and punished. Oedipus then seeks information from the prophet Teiresias, who is provoked into revealing that Oedipus himself was the killer. Oedipus initially rejects this claim, but begins to have doubts after talking with his wife Jocasta, who was once married to Laius. Jocasta recalls a prophecy that Laius would be killed by his own son, but she claims that this prophecy did not come true, because Laius was murdered by highwaymen. This leads Oedipus to recall killing a man who resembled Laius, and a prophecy which had claimed that Oedipus would kill his own father, and marry his own mother. A shepherd from Mount Cithaeron reveals the awful truth: in response to the prophecy about their son, Laius and Jocasta had tried to expose the infant Oedipus in the wilderness. However, the shepherd had taken pity on the child, and sent him away to be raised in another area. Not knowing his true heritage, Oedipus eventually left home to avoid harming the people whom he believed to be his parents, but unknowingly fulfilled the prophecy by killing Laius and marrying Jocasta. Upon learning this, Jocasta commits suicide, and Oedipus blinds himself with Jocasta's brooches. Creon assumes control of Thebes as Oedipus begs to be exiled along with his daughters, Ismene and Antigone.
Hard Times (1854)
Thomas Gradgrind is a fact-obsessed utilitarian from Coketown, in the north of England. He superintends a school whose students include an ambitious boy named Bitzer, and Sissy Jupe, a young member of Mr. Sleary's traveling circus. Mr. Gradgrind arranges for his daughter Louisa to marry Josiah Bounderby, an unpleasant older banker who employs Mr. Grandgrind's son, Tom. The politician James Harthouse tries to seduce Louisa, who returns home to her father and causes him to see the error of his ways. Tom Gradgrind steals from Mr. Bounderby, unsuccessfully tries to frame a worker named Stephen Blackpool, and flees to America.
Lady Macbeth, from Macbeth
Though Macbeth is the play's protagonist, his pursuit of the Scottish throne is largely driven by his wife's ambition. After three witches predict that Macbeth will be king, Lady Macbeth fears that her husband is "too full 'o the milk of human kindness" to commit murder, and bids "spirits" to "unsex" her and imbue her with willpower. She insults Macbeth's masculinity, and urges him to "screw [his] courage to the sticking-place" and kill King Duncan. When Macbeth is unable to frame two grooms for the murder, Lady Macbeth does so in his place. Later, Lady Macbeth is wracked with guilt for her actions. While sleepwalking, she tries to wash imaginary blood from her hands, and cries "out, damned spot!" In the final act, the news of her death prompts Macbeth to deliver the "tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquy.
Tybalt, from Romeo and Juliet
Tybalt is a hot-headed member of the Capulet family who is the beloved cousin of Juliet. During the public brawl that begins the play, Tybalt provokes the peaceful Benvolio. At a ball given by the Capulets, Tybalt recognizes the disguised Romeo and calls for a sword, but is prevented from fighting by Lord Capulet. Tybalt then demands a duel with Romeo, who does not wish to fight one of Juliet's kinsmen. Romeo's friend Mercutio is shocked by this "vile submission," and calls Tybalt "king of cats" while challenging him to a duel. (Tybalt shares his name with a feline character from medieval fables about Reynard the Fox.) Romeo tries to intervene in the duel, which allows Tybalt to kill Mercutio. Romeo then kills Tybalt, and is banished from Verona.
Jules Verne (1828-1905, France)
Verne offered a brighter vision of technological progress in his novels of adventure, many of which doubled as works of popular science. In Verne's 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, Professor Lidenbrock explains contemporary theories of geology and paleontology as he leads an expedition that travels beneath the Earth's crust from Iceland to the Italian volcano Stromboli. Verne later wrote the 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, whose narrator Pierre Aronnax offers extensive commentary on marine biology while accompanying the mysterious Captain Nemo on a voyage in the submarine Nautilus. In a more realistic vein, Verne considered the possibilities presented by new forms of transportation in the 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days, which describes a trip taken by the Englishman Phileas Fogg and his French valet Jean Passepartout. During his travels, which are undertaken to win a bet with members of the Reform Club, Fogg falls in love with an Indian woman named Aouda, and is pursued by the Scotland Yard detective Fix, who mistakenly believes that Fogg is a bank robber. Fogg ultimately wins his bet to return to the Reform Club within 80 days of his departure, with the help of an extra day gained by traveling eastward.
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007, United States)
Vonnegut's fiction provides a darkly humorous response to the absurdities and violence of the twentieth century. During World War II, Vonnegut was a prisoner of war in Germany, and lived through the Allied firebombing of Dresden. That experience was the basis for Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five, in which the soldier Billy Pilgrim becomes "unstuck in time," and perceives his life in a non-linear fashion. Billy travels between the present, past, and future as he is captured by the German army, witnesses the destruction of Dresden, becomes a prosperous optometrist in the town of Ilium, is kidnapped by aliens and placed in a zoo along with the actress Montana Wildhack, and is eventually assassinated. Slaughterhouse-Five contains a number of elements that recur in other Vonnegut novels, including the veteran Eliot Rosewater, aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, the unsuccessful science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, and members of the wealthy Rumfoord family. Vonnegut also wrote the novel Cat's Cradle, which describes a substance called "ice-nine" that instantly turns liquid water into a solid. Ice-nine was created by the atomic scientist Felix Hoenikker, whose life is researched by the novel's narrator, John. Another thread in Cat's Cradle concerns the "bittersweet lies" of the prophet Bokonon, who lives on the Caribbean island San Lorenzo. Bokonon comments on human stupidity after an accident that occurs during the funeral of the San Lorenzan dictator Papa Monzano causes ice-nine to fall into the ocean, destroying almost all life on Earth
Salman Rushdie (born 1947)
novelist born in India, who holds British and American citizenship. Rushdie's 1981 Booker Prize-winning novel Midnight's Children follows Saleem Sinai, a man with an enormous nose who is born at precisely the moment that India becomes independent, giving him telepathic powers. Other members of the novel's title group—the people born within an hour of independence—include Shiva, a child with enormous knees, and the magical Parvati-the-witch. Rushdie's 1988 novel The Satanic Verses begins as the actors Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha are miraculously saved after their plane explodes over the English Channel. Upon being betrayed by Gibreel, Saladin seeks revenge by ruining Gibreel's relationship with the mountaineer Allie Cone. The Satanic Verses was condemned in a fatwa, or religious decree, issued by Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The fatwa accused Rushdie of blasphemy, and ordered Muslims to kill Rushdie, his editors, and his publishers. In 1998, Iran agreed not to actively seek Rushdie's death. Rushdie described his years of hiding in the memoir Joseph Anton; the title refers to the pseudonym that Rushdie adopted, which was inspired by the authors Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. Rushdie's other novels include The Moor's Last Sigh, which is narrated by the swiftly aging Moraes Zogoiby; The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which was loosely inspired by the legend of Orpheus; and the young adult books Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Luka and the Fire of Life.
Thomas Pynchon (born 1937)
reclusive American novelist. His 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow follows Tyrone Slothrop, a lieutenant in World War II whose sexual encounters seem to predict the locations of future V-2 rocket strikes. A number of characters in the novel are trying to find the secret of a mysterious device called the Schwärzgerat, which is to be installed in a rocket with the serial number 00000. Pynchon also wrote The Crying of Lot 49, in which Oedipa Maas suspects that she has become entangled in an ancient conflict between the Thurn und Taxis and Trystero mail delivery services. Other Pynchon novels include V., in which Herbert Stencil searches for the mysterious title entity, and Inherent Vice, about the Los Angeles private investigator Doc Sportello.