Literature

Narrative is the representation of events through an organized account, shaped by choices of sequence, perspective, medium, and context.

Narrative perspective is the position through which a story’s events, knowledge, perceptions, and judgments are presented to an audience.

George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel about totalitarian power, surveillance, manipulated truth, and the destruction of individual independence.

The Nobel Prize in Literature is an international award established under Alfred Nobel’s will and awarded by the Swedish Academy for outstanding literary achievement.

A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction, usually in prose, that develops characters, events, and an imagined world.

A novella is a prose fiction form intermediate between the short story and the novel, distinguished by concentrated scope and variable length.

Ancient Greek epic attributed to Homer, recounting Odysseus’s return from Troy and the recovery of his household and kingship.

A 1967 novel by Gabriel García Márquez tracing seven generations of the Buendía family and the rise and destruction of Macondo.

Othello is William Shakespeare's tragedy (c. 1603–1604) about a Moorish general in Venetian service, destroyed by jealousy engineered by his ensign Iago.

Plot is the arrangement of narrative events and actions through which a literary work develops connections, expectations, and consequences.

Poetic meter is the patterned organization of syllables, stresses, or syllable lengths that provides a rhythmic framework for verse.

Poetry is a literary art that organizes language through sound, rhythm, imagery, and form to create concentrated or layered meaning.

Jane Austen's 1813 novel of manners on love, class and first impressions in Regency England.

Pu Songling was a Qing-dynasty Chinese writer best known for Liaozhai zhiyi, a collection of supernatural tales in literary Chinese.

Bengali poet, composer, artist, and educator who received the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature and founded Visva-Bharati.

An ancient Sanskrit epic recounting Rama’s exile, Sita’s abduction, and the war against Ravana, with diverse religious, literary, and artistic traditions across Asia.

Mo Yan’s debut novel, first published in 1987, intertwines family memories and wartime history in Northeast Gaomi Township.

A historical novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong, dramatizing the fall of the Han dynasty and the rival states of Wei, Shu and Wu; a cornerstone of Chinese literature.

An artistic and intellectual movement emphasizing imagination, emotion, individuality, and new relationships with nature and history.

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, written around 1595, about two young lovers from feuding Verona families. It became one of the most performed and adapted plays in the English language.

A 2001 novel by Mo Yan set in late Qing Shandong, combining folk opera, multiple narrative voices, and depictions of torture.

A novella by Mo Yan about a laid-off worker’s livelihood and changing identity, and the title story of an English-language collection of his fiction.

A short story is a brief, self-contained work of prose fiction characterized by concentrated narrative and selective development of characters, events, and themes.

Stream of consciousness is a literary mode that represents the changing flow of a character’s thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and associations.

Su Shi (1037–1101), also called Su Dongpo, was a Northern Song poet, prose writer, calligrapher, painter and statesman whose work shaped Chinese literati culture.

The Swedish Academy is an independent cultural institution that promotes Swedish language and literature and selects the Nobel Prize laureates in literature.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel about wealth, reinvention, and lost love in Jazz Age America.

An illustrated novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry exploring friendship, responsibility, childhood, and loss through an interplanetary journey.

A high fantasy novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, published in three volumes in 1954–55 and set in Middle-earth. It shaped modern fantasy and inspired major film adaptations.

Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella about a salesman’s inexplicable bodily transformation and his family’s response.

A 1952 novella by Ernest Hemingway about an aging Cuban fisherman’s struggle with a giant marlin, exploring endurance, loss, pride, and companionship.

A 1942 novella by Albert Camus about Meursault, an indifferent man in French Algeria whose killing of a man leads to a trial that judges his conduct, illustrating absurdism.

An early eleventh-century Japanese court narrative by Murasaki Shikibu, tracing love, power, and loss across generations.

A novella published by Mo Yan in 1985 that portrays rural life through a young boy’s labor and extraordinary sensory perceptions.

Thomas Mann was a German novelist and essayist, awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose fiction explored artistic identity, bourgeois society, and European cultural crises.

Harper Lee’s 1960 novel about childhood, racial injustice, and moral responsibility in a small Alabama town.

French Romantic poet, novelist, dramatist, and political figure whose literary innovations and public commitments shaped nineteenth-century culture.

Classical Roman poet of the Augustan age, author of the Eclogues, Georgics, and the national epic Aeneid.

Virginia Woolf was an English modernist novelist, essayist, critic, and publisher whose experiments with consciousness and time helped reshape fiction and feminist literary thought.

Leo Tolstoy's Russian novel of 1865–1869, set against the Napoleonic Wars, blending family narrative with reflections on history.

A classic Chinese novel about 108 outlaws whose fellowship at Liangshan explores justice, loyalty, rebellion, and imperial authority.

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, and cultural organizer who helped shape modern Irish literature and won the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature.

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor whose works became central to world literature and theatrical performance.

Chinese writer whose fiction and autobiographical prose portray northeastern life, poverty, gender relations, and wartime displacement.