World Literature

New Zealander

Katherine Mansfield, Nationality

Japanese

Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Nationality

Japanese

Yasunari Kawabata, Nationality

Argentine

Jorge Luis Borges, Nationality

South African

Nadine Gordimer, Nationality

Colombian

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nationality

Nigerian

Chinua Achebe, Nationality

Chilean

Isabel Allende, Nationality

Indian

Arundhati Roy, Nationality

Mansfield

May have caught tuberculosis from D. H. Lawrence

Mansfield

The Garden Party, Author

Mansfield

Author: Miss Brill

The Garden Party

story about the Sheridan Family

The Garden Party

Begins with Laura Sheridan directing the placement of a marquee

The Garden Party

The servant Sadie asks for sandwich flags

The Garden Party

A carter named Mr. Scott is thrown off a horse and dies

The Garden Party

Laura brings leftovers to Mr. Scott’s house after he dies

The Garden Party

Ends with Laura repeating the question “Isn’t life-”

Akutagawa

In a Grove, Author

Akutagawa

Author: Rashomon / Cogwheels / Hell Screen

In a Grove

body of Samurai Kanazawa no Takehiro found in bamboo forest, Contradictory accounts of what happened

In a Grove

Begins with the police questioning a woodcutter

In a Grove

The ghost of Takehiro gives an account of his death through a medium

In a Grove

The “man in blue silk” offers Takehiro swords and mirrors

Kawabata

Snow Country, Author

Kawabata

Author: Thousand Cranes / The Dancing Girl of Izu / The Master of Go / The Old Capital

Snow Country

Shimamura visits a resort where romance ensues with girls Yoko and Komako

Snow Country

Opens with Shimamura looking at Yoko’s reflection in a train window

Snow Country

Shimamura considers himself an expert in ballet despite never having seen one

Snow Country

Yoko cares for a music teacher’s son who is dying of tuberculosis

Snow Country

Shimamura tells Komako that his finger remembered her

Snow Country

Yoko dies in a silk warehouse fire, during which Shimamura looks at the Milky Way

Borges

Completely blind by age of 55

Borges

The Library of Babel, Author

Borges

The Garden of Forking Paths, Author

Borges

Author: The Aleph / Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote / Averroes' Speech / Death and the Compass

The Library of Babel

Hexagonal rooms containing near infinite number of books

The Library of Babel

The “Purifiers” search frantically for the Crimson Hexagon

The Library of Babel

Letizia Alvarez de Toledo uses Cavalieri’s Principle to claim that the library is pointless

The Library of Babel

The narrator contemplates the phrase “O time thy pyramids”

The Library of Babel

Suicide and pulmonary disease decimate the population of the library

The Library of Babel

Residents of the library are thrown into air shafts when they die

The Garden of Forking Paths

Chinese Professor Yu Tsun works as a German spy in Great Britain during WWI

The Garden of Forking Paths

In the town of Ashgrove, Yu Tsun murders Dr. Stephen Albert to relay the location of an artillery park

The Garden of Forking Paths

Yu Tsun sees a bird and imagines it turning into a plane and dropping bombs

The Garden of Forking Paths

Features the riddle “In a guessing game to which the answer is chess, which word is the only one prohibited?” (the answer is “chess”)

The Garden of Forking Paths

Yu Tsun’s ancestor, Ts’ui Pen, wrote a book that is also an infinite labyrinth

Gordimer

July's People, Author

Gordimer

Author: The Conservationist / Burger's Daughter / Beethoven was One-Sixteenth Black

July's People

white Smales Family amidst violent uprising against Apartheid, taking refuge with black servant July

July's People

July drives off in a yellow “bakkie” truck without telling the Smales family

July's People

Daniel, a friend of July, steals Bamford’s shotgun to go join rebel fighters

July's People

Ends with Maureen Smales running towards a helicopter

Garcia Marquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Author

Garcia Marquez

Chronicle of a Death Fortold, Author

Garcia Marquez

Author: Love in the Time of Cholera / The Autumn of the Patriarch

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Magical realist novel following Buendia Family, fictional town of Macondo founded by patriarch Jose Arcadio

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Begins with Colonel Aureliano facing a firing squad remembering when his father took him to “discover” ice

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Features prophecies written in Sanskrit, including one saying that Jose Arcadio will be tied to a chestnut tree and another that a baby with a pig’s tail will be eaten by ants

One Hundred Years of Solitude

After striking banana plantation workers are massacred, it rains for five years

One Hundred Years of Solitude

The adoption of the orphan Rebeca starts a plague of insomnia

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Remedios the Beauty ascends to heaven while doing laundry

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Golden fish are created, melted down, and recreated by Colonel Aureliano

One Hundred Years of Solitude

The prostitute Nigromanta sells chicken heads

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gaston returns to Belgium to start an airmail business

One Hundred Years of Solitude

An Italian musician, Pietro Crespi, kills himself after being rejected by two women

Chronicle of a Death Fortold

Murder of Santiago Nasar by the Vicario Twins

Chronicle of a Death Fortold

Clotilde Armenta owns a milk bar that is visited by the Vicario twins

Chronicle of a Death Fortold

Santiago Nasar dreams that a bird pooped on him from a tree, which his mother inaccurately interprets as an omen of good health

Achebe

Things Fall Apart, Author

Achebe

Author: No Longer at Ease / Arrow of God / Anthills of the Savannah / An Image of Africa

Things Fall Apart

yam farmer Okonkwo leader of fiction Igbo clan Umuofia, depicts how life changes for the worse after European Colonization

Things Fall Apart

Okonkwo defeats Amalinze the Cat at wrestling

Things Fall Apart

An exploding gun kills a 16 year old, causing Okonkwo to be exiled

Things Fall Apart

Okonkwo beats his wife during the “Week of Peace”

Things Fall Apart

Characters are sent to the Evil Forest to die

Things Fall Apart

Features the Oracle of the Hills and Caves

Allende

Second Cousin Once Removed of Chilean President deposed of in 1973 coup

Allende

The House of the Spirits, Author

Allende

Eva Luna, Author

The House of the Spirits

Magical Realist Novel following Four Generations of Trueba Family

The House of the Spirits

Its first and last sentence is “Barrabas came to us by sea”

The House of the Spirits

An earthquake destroys the Tres Marias estate

The House of the Spirits

Clara does not speak for nine years after her green-haired sister, Rosa the Beautiful, is poisoned

The House of the Spirits

Blanca has an affair with Pedro Tercero, and the two later flee to Canada

The House of the Spirits

Esteban participates in a coup against the socialist government

The House of the Spirits

The Hotel Christopher Columbus is turned into a brothel

Eva Luna

Orphan in fictional country in South America

Eva Luna

Eva was conceived when her mother was helping a gardener recover from a snake bite

Eva Luna

Eva has a romance with a guerrilla revolutionary, Huberto Naranjo, and creates fake grenades to help him break other fighters out of prison

Eva Luna

Eva eventually falls in love with the journalist Rolfe Carlé

Roy

The God of Small Things, Author

The God of Small Things

twins Estha and Rahel who begin an incestuous relationship in adulthood

The God of Small Things

The communist Velutha, an untouchable, works for Paradise Pickles and Preserves, which is owned by Chacko

The God of Small Things

Velutha is beaten to death in police custody

The God of Small Things

At a screening of The Sound of Music, Estha is molested by the “Orangedrink Lemondrink Man”

The God of Small Things

The twins’ half-British cousin Sophie Mol drowns when a boat capsizes on its way to the History House

The God of Small Things

The twins’ grandfather Pappachi discovers a new moth species, but it is named after a rival entomologist

Japanese

Sei Shonagon, Nationality