World Literature Independent
Reading Selection
Author Title Country Difficulty
Homer Iliad
Considered the first (war) epic. A wonderful story of heroes, but the “blood
and guts” gets a little old after a while.
Homer Odyssey
Story of a man’s trek (odyssey) to make it home to
the family he loves. Odysseus is the
template for all heroes. Beautiful stories and great adventure.
Sophocles Antigone
Considered a feminist play, it
simply is a story of a person’s battle against great
odds—do you follow the law of the
land or the law of family?
Plato Plato’s
Apology
“the
unexamined life is not worth living.”
Defense speech using dramatic monologue; Socrates’
trial for the corruption of youth
Koran
Central message of one single,
unique God (Allah literally means “the God”); Islam = submission
Unknown 1001 Nights Persian,
Arabic, Indian ***
Blending of cultures; Princess Shaharazad and her cunning to stay alive; folk tale-oral
tales made
for a general audience, simple
language; teach a lesson using Romantic characters; theme of
passion and forgiveness
Unknown Song of Roland French ***
This is the best-kept war
epic. A true story is embellished to
create a battle of
pagan (Muslim) vs.
Christian. It was considered
inspirational for the Great Crusades.
Chretien de Troyes Grail
Stories French **
de Troyes is best known for adding Sir Launcelot
into the Arthurian legend. The
Grail is the considered in Christian circles to have
been the cup the Christ drank from at the Last Supper and the cup that caught
Christ’s blood when he suffered under Pontios Pilate.
Hugo,
Victor Les Miserables French ***
Jean val Jean is a man pursued by his nemesis for a petty
crime. It’s a story of
what makes one happy in life.
Camus The Plague French **
Chaos prevails when the bubonic plague strikes the Algerian coastal
city
Dumas,
Alexandre The Three Musketeers French *
A perennial favorite, this work continues to hold
appeal for adventure lovers. Full of intrigue, swordplay, and
revenge.
Verne,
Jules Around the World in Eighty Days French **
In
1872 Phileas Fogg wins a
bet by traveling around the world in seventy-nine days, twenty-three hours, and
fifty-seven minutes (Why can’t we just say 80 days?).
Remarque All
Quiet on the Western Front German **
A realistic account of the
lives and deaths of a group of German boys on the Western front.
Cormier Heroes French-Canadian *
Classified as a horror story,
the protagonist is a teenage boy who joined WWII
before his eighteenth birthday
only to suffer a disfiguring injury at the hands of an
exploding grenade. Be warned, there is a rape scene, but it is
not explicit.
Carrier, Roch La
Guerre, yes sir! French-Canadian ***
A
party of English Canadian soldiers returns the body of Corriveau,
killed in the war, to his native village in
Ondaarje, Michael The English Patient Canadian **
In
Cairo, a man meets a married woman with whom he falls in love, but the war
keeps them apart and destroys her while he, severely burned, lives to tell
their story to a nurse caring for him in an abandoned Tuscan villa.
Kogawa, Joy Obasan Canadian ***
A dark moment in Canadian
history. 2nd World War. Deportation. What more do you want to know?
German
Hesse, Hermann Siddhartha German ***
The
1922 classic, based on events from the life of Buddha, tells of a restless
young seeker’s spiritual journey, ranging from years of asceticism to fleshly
pleasures to the ultimate enlightenment.
Kafka,
Franz The Trial German ***
Kafka's final work was left
unfinished at the time of his 1924 death.
Various African Countries
Emechata, Buchi The Bride Price Nigerian ****
When
Aku-nna's father dies, the tribe demands that she,
her mother, and brother go to live with her uncle, a situation that conflicts
with the views she holds in the 1950s.
Achebe, Chinua Things
Fall Apart Nigerian *
Traces
the growing friction between village leaders and Europeans determined to save
the heathen souls of
Asgedom, Mawi Of Beetles and Angels Eritrean *
Autobiography of a families
journey from war-torn
Dangarembga, Tsisi Nervous
Conditions Zimbabwean ****
Tsitsi Dangarembga's
novel 'Nervous Conditions' focuses on the alienation of Shona
women from restrictive traditional practices. Barred by custom from disagreeing
verbally with their family, one woman chooses to rebel by feigning paralysis
while another refuses to eat food. In both cases, the women express rebellion
through the body.
Paton, Alan Cry,
the Beloved Country South
African *
A
Zulu country parson arrives in
Inspirational autobiography
of emigrating from Puerto Rico to the
Fuentes,
Carlos The Campaign Argentine ***
Baltasar Bustos, son of a wealthy Argentinian
ranch owner, defies the Spanish colonial regime and falls in love with a
magistrate's wife after sneaking into her house and substituting her newborn
with another child.
Allende, Isabel The House of the Spirits Chilean ****
The Trueba family embodies strong feelings from the beginning
of the 20th century through the assassination of Allende
in 1973.
Narrated
by an elderly West Indian woman looking back on her life, a story beginning at
the height of imperialism and ending as colonialism fades deals with sex, human
relations, and the interplay of power and powerlessness.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel One
Hundred Years of Solitude Columbian **
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a stylistically
extravagant tour de force, at once matter-of-fact and magical. Although much
praised as the epitome of postmodernist writing, it is also a deeply
compassionate novel in which the exuberant storytelling celebrates man's
creative abilities in the face of inevitable catastrophe.
Various Asian Countries
Markandaya, Kamala Nectar in a
Sieve
In a
small village in
Mori,
After
her mother's suicide when she is twelve years old, Yuki spends years living with
her distant father and his resentful new wife, cut off from her mother's
family, and relying on her own inner strength to cope with the tragedy.
Na, An A Step
from Heaven Korean *
A
young Korean girl and her family find it difficult to learn English and adjust
to life in
Nakazawa, Keiji Barefoot
Gen Japanese *
From the perspective of a
young Japanese child growing up in
Albee Who’s
Afraid of Virgina Woolf?
Family
dysfunction at its finest. George
and Martha are not protagonists; they’re
both antagonist who ruin the
lives of all those around them.
William
C. Williams Selected poetry American **
Simple imagery
poetry of the 1930’s.
Wallace
Stevens Selected poetry American **
A wonderful
writer of imagery poetry.
Frost Selected
poetry American *
No one captures the
Desai
Hidier, Tanuja Born Confused American **
Seventeen-year-old
Dimple, whose family is from
Spiegelman, Art Complete
Maus American ***
The story of Vladek Spiegelman's years interned at
Hemingway A Farewell to Arms American **
Semi-autobiographical story
of a man who is injured in WWI in
Buford Among the
Thugs American/English **
Bill Buford infiltrates soccer
hooligans of English football to expose the violence and evil nature
of
crazed fans of
scenes.
Swift Gulliver’s
Travels Irish ***
Swift attempts to show the
pettiness and silly nature of mankind.
Stories can
become rather absurd at times.
Doyle A Star Called Henry+ Irish **
This story follows the life of
Henry Smart, a poor boy from the slums of
who grows up to become a member
of the terrorist group, IRA. Some strong
language and sexual content.
Doyle Oh, Play
That Thing+ Irish **
Henry Smart makes his way to
Armstrong. Some strong language and
sexual content.
Other
Virgil Aeneid
Aeneas, a Trojan fleeing the burning of
Unknown Beowulf Engl/Scand **
A wonderful
mini-epic that combines the Christian and the pagan. Beowulf is an
Old English hero who
sacrifices for the sake of fame, God, and his people.
Chaucer
A slice of the Old-Mid English
period; sometimes raunchy tales as the group goes to the shrine of
Unknown Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight
This Arthurian legend tells of a
man’s perseverance to keep his chivalrous name,
even if it means losing his head
over it.
Malory Morte d’ Arthur
The key writer of the Arthurian
legend, he tells the many tales of King Arthur and
his
knights.
Marlowe The Tragical History of
the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus
****
The hero is seen as an amoral
figure who sells his soul to the Devil.
“Why, this is Hell, nor am I
out of it.”
Shakespeare Tragedies
May I suggest Richard III
(for pure evil) or King Lear (for family betrayal)
Written by one of the Big 3
English writers; theme of falling prey to the Devil’s temptation;
rationalist writer—reasoning power
given to man and woman
Shelly
Frankenstein
Mary Shelly found her inspiration from a nightmare
she once had. It is a horror story of a
man who simply wants to be loved and be like everyone else. The first forty pages are slow, but it picks
up after that.
Austen Pride and
Prejudice
It’s not just a “chic” book. It is a love story, but paints a picture of
the female psyche during the nineteenth century.
Tennyson Idylls of the
King
Simply
put, beautiful poetry.
The Arthurian legend was brought back to life in the nineteenth century
because of this work.
DeFoe Robinson
Crusoe
This is known as a story of solitude, but it speaks
on the subject of slavery as well.
Coleridge Rime of the
Ancient Mariner
Coleridge is a Romantic (nature and youthful vigor)
writer and uses the theme “Love all God’s creatures, great and small.”
Wordsworth Lyrical Ballads
Another Romantic writer, he
captures the definition of the term.
Wells Time
Machine
What would happen if we were
given the opportunity to skip across time?
Wells War of
the Worlds
The battle for
supremacy of the world.
Brooke
& Sassoon World War I
poetry
To extremes of
WWI. These two poets would make a
solid comparison and
Contrast.
Orwell 1984
A story written in the middle of
the twentieth century, it takes a futurist look at
what the world would be like in
1984 with “Big Brother.”
Orwell Animal
Farm
If animals could talk and rise
up against their oppressors on the farm, this might
happen.
Greene The Quiet American
One of the best novels of the
twentieth century, it mixes political intrigue, a crime
story, and a love triangle into a
wonderful tale with a setting in French-occupied
Rumbelow The Complete Jack the Ripper
Rumbelow,
considered by many as the utmost authority on Jack the Ripper, uses his
expertise
from
twenty years of service with Scotland Yard to unfold one of the greatest serial
killer murder
mysteries
of all time. He displays the crime
scenes, all the possible suspects and delves into the
copycat
Rippers since these gruesome murders in the summer and fall of 1888.
Goethe Faust
The Devil (Mephistopheles) is
seen as a playful sort, God rather cynical towards man, and Faust
as the restless seeker of
knowledge (Romantic spirit of the unquenchable spirit). “Time is short;
art is long.”
Dante Inferno
A very imaginative tale of a
man’s trip through hell to recognize his sins and see the awfulness of symbolic
retribution.
Petrarch Canzoniere
366 Petrarchan
love sonnets to Laura using constant allegories
Boccaccio Decameron+
One hundred stories written during
the Great Plague that are rather raunchy.
Women and clergy be warned.
Machiavelli The
Prince
Originally written for a possible leader who would
unite
Chekhov,
Anton The
Cherry Orchard Russian ****
Dostoevsky, Fyodor Crime and Punishment Russian ******
Raskolnikoff murders an old moneylender and her
sister, and after a lengthy investigation a saintly prostitute Sonya convinces
him to confess.