Nobel Laureates in Literature

A Bend in The River, the 1974 novel by Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul (A House for Mr. Biswas, In a Free State, The Enigma of Arrival), takes place in an unnamed postcolonial African town. The main character, Salim, narrates the story, which begins when he moves away from his family to the interior of the country to run a town shop. Salim is of Muslim Indian descent, but his family has lived in... Read A Bend In The River Summary

William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936) is one of the many texts in Faulkner’s oeuvre that is set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. Faulkner is considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, a designation earned due to his innovative and stylistic modernist techniques, which he uses to investigate the history and identity of the American South. Faulkner, who grew up in Mississippi and spent the majority of his life there, was deeply... Read Absalom, Absalom Summary

Accidental Death of an Anarchist was first written and produced by playwright and actor Dario Fo in Italy, 1970. The script was directly inspired by the events surrounding the 1969 Piazza Fontana Bombing, and much of Fo’s work revolves around political satire directed at Italy post-World War II and later. Exemplifying Fo’s work as a writer, Accidental Death of an Anarchist combines the humor, irony, and satire of the old Italian tradition of commedia dell’arte... Read Accidental Death Of An Anarchist Summary

Ernest Hemingway’s short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” was first published in Scribner’s Magazine in March of 1933. It was then anthologized in Hemingway’s 1933 short story collection Winner Takes Nothing. It is regarded as one of his most important and influential short stories and as a clear example of his “Iceberg Theory” and his focus on typical Modernist existential themes. Utilizing the Iceberg Theory, Hemingway allows most of the story to sit below the... Read A Clean, Well-Lighted Place Summary

Written and first performed in 1960 as part of the national celebrations of Nigeria’s independence from Britain, A Dance of the Forests features a unique combination of classically European dramatic elements and traditional Yoruba masquerade traditions which make the play resistant to both staging and traditional Western criticism. Since 1960, few attempts have been made to perform the play, due to its complexity and ambiguity. A Dance of the Forests presents an allegorical criticism of... Read A Dance of the Forests Summary

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Kazuo Ishiguro is an English and Japanese author who is most well-known for prizewinning novels such as The Remains of the Day (1989) and Never Let Me Go (2005), the latter of which was adapted into a film in 2010. “A Family Supper” is a 1983 short story that was originally published in a volume of Ishiguro’s works, titled Firebird 2: Writing Today.The short story begins when an unnamed narrator returns to his homeland of... Read A Family Supper Summary

A Farewell to Arms, written by Ernest Hemingway and published in 1929, is the story of Frederic Henry, an officer with the Italian army in World War I, and his relationship with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse. Some have noted the similarities between the main character and Hemingway, who also served in the Italian army as an ambulance driver in 1918, and his nurse, Agnes Von Kurowsky, who cared for Hemingway after he was wounded.The... Read A Farewell to Arms Summary

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A House for Mr. Biswas is a 1961 historical fiction novel by V. S. Naipaul. The story takes a postcolonial perspective of the life of a Hindu Indian man in British-owned and occupied Trinidad. Now regarded as one of Naipaul's most significant novels, A House for Mr. Biswas has won numerous awards and has been adapted as a musical, a radio drama, and a television show. Naipaul is also known for the works The Mimic... Read A House for Mr. Biswas Summary

Published in 2008, A Mercy is Toni Morrison’s ninth novel. Morrison, both a prolific scholar and author, centers the question of slavery and a pre-racial America in this historical fiction novel. A Mercy was chosen as one of the best books in the year of its release by the New York Times. Morrison is also known for the award-winning novels The Bluest Eye (1970), Tar Baby (1981), and Beloved (1987), among many others.Plot SummaryA Mercy... Read A Mercy Summary

A Moveable Feast was written by Ernest Hemingway and published posthumously in 1964, three years after his death. The title, A Moveable Feast, is a play on the term used for holy days that do not consistently fall on the same date every year. The memoir’s structure mirrors this concept, featuring 20 separate yet related stories that make up Hemingway’s own collection of inconsistent holy days. The memoir blends fact with fiction as Hemingway recalls... Read A Moveable Feast Summary

A Pale View of Hills (1982) is Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel. Born in Nagasaki in 1954, Ishiguro immigrated with his family to the United Kingdom when he was five years old. Despite his family’s Japanese origins, the author frequently states in interviews that his experience with Japanese culture is very limited, as he spent all his adult life in England. Simultaneously, however, growing up in a Japanese family developed in Ishiguro a different perspective compared... Read A Pale View of Hills Summary

Published in 1930, “A Rose for Emily” is one of American author William Faulkner’s most popular short stories and was his first to appear in a national magazine. Like many of Faulkner’s other works, “A Rose for Emily” takes place in the fictional town of Jefferson, which is based on Faulkner’s hometown of Oxford, Mississippi. Through the titular character Emily Grierson, Faulkner explores the complex relationships between individuals and society in the American South, and... Read A Rose for Emily Summary

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“A Very Short Story” is one of Ernest Hemingway’s earliest literary works. It originally appeared as one of 18 vignettes that made up the chapbook in our time, published in 1924. The story was later republished, along with the original vignettes and 14 additional short stories, in a new and expanded edition of In Our Time in 1925. This guide refers to that later edition.“A Very Short Story” is semi-autobiographical, based loosely upon Hemingway’s own... Read A Very Short Story Summary

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