By: Zora Neale Hurston (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1937) Summary: One of the preeminent writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God, the first novel to ever feature a black female protagonist. Set in Florida in the...
Shūsaku Endō, trans. William Johnston (New York: Taplinger, 1969) Summary: In early seventeenth-century Japan, when Christians were ruthlessly persecuted and even crucified, some chose to apostatize by stepping on a fumie, an icon bearing Jesus’s image. Seeing one of...
By: Bernhard Schlink (New York: Pantheon, 1997) Summary: “I wanted simultaneously to understand Hanna’s crime and to condemn it. But it was too terrible for that…. I could not resolve this. I wanted to pose myself both tasks—understanding and condemnation. But it was...
By: Barbara Kingsolver (New York: HarperCollins, 1998) Summary: The five members of the Price family—Nathan, Orleanna, and their four daughters—move to the Belgian Congo in 1959, leaving behind their home and belongings in Georgia, to act as Baptist missionaries to an...
By: Oscar Wilde (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003) Summary: Dublin-born Oscar Wilde climbed to the top of society as a witty playwright before writing his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Published in 1890, the story was immediately considered a...
By: Homer, trans. Robert Fagles (London: Viking Penguin, 1996) Summary: Over 2,700 years ago Homer constructed a tale of “waves and wars,” a quest following the epic feats of the Trojan War hero Odysseus. Whereas the Iliad deals with wrath, the Odyssey looks at...
By: Chaim Potok (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972) Summary: Asher Lev is a redheaded Hasidic Jew born in 1943 in Brooklyn. He has an almost supernatural ability to draw, yet his faith tradition tries to suppress this. Author Chaim Potok, a rabbi and artist, chronicles...
By: Euripides, trans. John Harrison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) Summary: If Sophocles is the kindly grandfather, Euripides is the cranky uncle. These two Greek playwrights were rivals, the former enjoying fame during his lifetime and the latter...
By: Homer trans. Robert Fagles (London: Penguin Classics, 1998) Summary: Homer, the ancient blind bard, is credited as the author of the 8th century BC epic poem The Iliad, a story of the ten-year Trojan War. The actual poem, however, focuses only on events in the...
By: Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games (New York: Scholastic, 2008) Catching Fire (New York: Scholastic, 2009) Mockingjay (New York: Scholastic, 2010) Summary: Katniss Everdeen narrates each book of The Hunger Games trilogy in present tense, which heightens the anxiety...
