Order & Chaos

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The Awakening is Kate Chopin’s second novel. It was first published in 1899 and is considered one of the first examples of feminist fiction.The novel opens in the 1890s Louisiana, at Grand Isle, a summer holiday resort popular among wealthy Creoles who live in nearby New Orleans. Edna Pontellier, her husband, Léonce, and their two children are vacationing at the cottages of Madame Lebrun. Léonce is a kind and devoted husband, but he is often... Read The Awakening Summary

The Bacchae is an ancient Athenian tragedy by Euripides. The play is generally believed to have been staged (with Iphigenia at Aulis and another play) in 405 BCE by the poet’s son after his father’s death in 407-6 and to have won first prize. The production took place in Athens at the City Dionysia, a festival in honor of Dionysus.Set in Thebes, the play depicts Dionysus (also known as Bacchus) returning to his mother’s city... Read The Bacchae Summary

La Cantatrice Chauve, translated to The Bald Soprano in English, is a 1950 absurdist play by Eugène Ionesco and a seminal work of the Theatre of the Absurd movement. Ionesco was famously inspired to write the play while learning English from an Assimil language primer, in which cliché English characters having artificial conversations and reciting basic facts of life soon began to take on absurd philosophical meaning for the playwright. The Bald Soprano was Ionesco’s... Read The Bald Soprano Summary

The Bear and the Nightingale (2017) is a historical fantasy novel by Katherine Arden. The story is set in medieval Russia and was heavily inspired by the country’s folklore and history. It follows Vasilisa “Vasya” Petrovna, a girl who lives in an isolated village at the edge of a forest and can communicate with household spirits and other supernatural beings that others cannot see. Her life is upended when her father marries a pious woman... Read The Bear and the Nightingale Summary

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The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music is a work of dramatic theory and cultural criticism by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). It was originally published in 1872 as Nietzsche’s first work, and later rereleased in 1886 under the title The Birth of Tragedy, or Hellenism and Pessimism. Nietzsche argues that Greek tragedy is born out of the merger between Apollonian and Dionysian perspectives. Nietzsche first differentiates between these two worldviews... Read The Birth of Tragedy Summary

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“The Blue Hotel” is an 1898 short story by American author Stephen Crane, a pioneer of Naturalism and Expressionism in the American literary canon. Originally published in two parts in the magazine Collier’s Weekly, “The Blue Hotel” was subsequently released in Crane’s 1899 collection The Monster and Other Stories. In telling the story of a murder that unfolds in a remote Nebraska town, it explores themes of Isolation and Its Impact on the Human Psyche... Read The Blue Hotel Summary

“The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” is a short story by American author Stephen Crane. Published in 1898, the story parodies tropes of old westerns and addresses the themes of the death of the Old West, domesticity, and masculinity. The story details the journey of Jack Potter, marshal of the small town of Yellow Sky, as he brings his new bride from the East back to his home in Texas on the Western frontier. Once... Read The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky Summary

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The Bronze Horseman: A Saint Petersburg Story is a narrative poem by 19th-century Russian poet, dramatist, and novelist Alexander Pushkin, who is considered Russia’s greatest poet. It was written in 1833, but was not published until 1841, after Pushkin’s death due to censorship of Pushkin’s works by the Russian government.Regarded as one of Pushkin’s most accomplished works, The Bronze Horseman has had a marked influence on Russian literature. The poem tells of the founding of Saint... Read The Bronze Horseman Summary

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When the story begins, a man named Erwin Martin, who never smokes, is buying cigarettes. Mr. Martin works for a company called F & S, where he is in charge of the filing department. Mr. Martin has already been contemplating—and planning—the murder of a coworker for over a week. Two years prior, a woman named Ulgine Barrows joined F & S, where she quickly proposed changes to the department—changes that Mr. Martin finds intolerable.Later, as... Read The Catbird Seat Summary

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China Miéville’s The City and the City, originally published in 2009, is a hybrid of two distinct genres—speculative fiction and detective fiction—that explores the human susceptibility to fear and the erection of borders as a response to that fear. Other themes examined in the novel are political corruption, violence inspired by far-right politics, and the allure of myths. The City and the City is the winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the World Fantasy... Read The City and the City Summary

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