Leo Braudy, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
All the popular monsters you’ll see out trick-or-treating, from Frankenstein to Dracula, were born out of fear and anxiety about change and technology.
No team in sports has inspired better literature than the hapless Chicago Cubs. The oeuvre includes a little-known tale by W.P. Kinsella: ‘The Last Pennant Before Armageddon.’
In 1913, an Indian literary giant named Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-white person to win the literature prize. He wrote over 2,000 songs and, like Dylan’s, they still resonate today.
From the yellow butterflies of his ‘Hundred Years of Solitude’ to his Nobel acceptance speech, author Gabriel García Márquez remains ever present in his country’s peace process.
The young adult novel “Eleanor & Park” is a frequent target for book challengers. But swears and sex aside, there’s something deeply subversive – and important – about this controversial book.
The tale of a married woman who joins her lover in Paris, The Beauties and Furies is a modernist classic. Like Joyce’s Ulysses, the action is concentrated in one city, but dreams are nightmarish in this city of night, not light.
Science fiction is a popular and lucrative genre – but most authors are men and relatable female characters are sadly lacking. Given this entrenched sexism, it’s time for publishers to take affirmative action.
All five novels explore alienation. But each is remarkably readable; with a wonderful sense of story and its elements: character, pacing, setting and yes, even plot.
When penning his novel ‘Demons,’ Fyodor Dostoevsky was influenced by political turmoil in Russia. But his impulsive, crass antagonist bears a striking similarity to the GOP’s candidate for president.
Family feuds, love affairs, empire writing back to the motherland - the medieval Icelandic saga have it all. Though less known than other classics of European literature they richly deserve a place among the best.