As we celebrate Black History month, we shine a particular spotlight on some of the most renowned African American writers of the past century. Whether you’re a lifelong devotee or looking to diversify your reading, these extraordinary authors--winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and Nobel Prize--are sure to blow you away.
For fans of the great J. R. R. Tolkien, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil provides yet another avenue to experience the unmatched storytelling and myth-spinning for which Tolkien is so famously known. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is a compilation of sixteen poems and a true potpourri of material. It is presented as if it is a literal translation from the manuscript known as the Red Book of Westmarch.
It was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that made Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll, a household name. However, during his own time Charles Dodgson was known for several other vocations besides that of authoring children's books. In addition to being an author, Dodgson was a professor of mathematics at Oxford University, an ordained deacon in the Anglican church, and a very accomplished photographer.
Jorge Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1899. Borges spent many of his early years abroad in Geneva, Switzerland and later in Spain, where he became acquainted with Western literary trends and the shift into the period that we now describe as "modernism." He returned to Buenos Aires in the early 1920s and published his first book, Fervor de Buenos Aires, in 1923.
In 1983, Arthur Miller directed his masterpiece, Death of a Salesman, for an audience in China. At the time - in the midst of the Cold War - Communist China was viewed by many as an opposite cultural pole to the capitalist America dramatized in Miller’s famous tragedy. As a result, bringing to life the Brooklyn of the 1940s for a Chinese audience in the 80s was a momentous task for the performers. But, Miller was deliberate in shifting the focus from matters of national and cultural identity. On the first day of rehearsal, Miller said, "the first thing I want to discuss with you is the problem of how to act like Americans. The answer is very simple...You must not attempt to act like Americans at all...One of my main motives in coming here is to try to show that there is only one humanity."
Today we celebrate the life of A. A. Milne, beloved author and creator of Winnie-the-Pooh. Although renowned as a novelist and playwright during his own lifetime, his children's stories—inspired by his son, Christopher Robin—have become Milne's enduring legacy. Illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard, his story collections Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928)—not to mention his poetry collections When We Were Very Young (1924) and Now We Are Six (1927)—have become indispensable children's classics.
The late, great Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) is best known for his fiction, flowing prose, and use of magical realism. His non-fiction, though somewhat lesser-known, is just as important to his memory. Take for example Clandestine in Chile (1986) – written from an eighteen hour interview with filmmaker Miguel Littin, who sneaked back into Chile after exile to expose the realities of the Pinochet dictatorship. In García Márquez's hands, the already thrilling true story becomes both electrifying and fraught with meaning.
How much do you know about Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame? It’s considered a seminal text of Gothic fiction, a style that’s often characterized by settings in looming castles with dark passageways, and general elements of the macabre or supernatural. Yet the Gothic isn’t a genre of literature unto itself, but rather a style that can make its way into various literary forms.
For Hugo, the Gothic tradition provided him with a way to conjure the medieval period in France in the early 19th century. Given that the term "Gothic" initially referred to a mode of art and architecture produced in the late middle ages, Hugo connected present-day Paris to the 15th century period in which he set the novel. Indeed, such a link proved necessary to discuss the historical importance of the Notre Dame cathedral, which was completed between the mid-13th century and early 14th century.
Haruki Murakami is one of contemporary literature’s true international stars. American readers, not known for their fondness of translations, cannot get enough of the Japanese writer's work. One of his most recent books, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, was released in August 2014 and topped The New York Times bestseller list, selling one million copies in Japan alone. He is also immensely popular in his native Japan, and cannot jog in his suburban Tokyo neighborhood without being recognized, a distinction he has called burdensome.
In December, at The Symphony Space in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, professional actors dramatized the work of two famous authors. Before the performance, the writers personally introduced their work to the audience. These authors were Teju Cole, author of the 2011 PEN/Hemingway winner, Open City, and Salman Rushdie, writer of The Satanic Verses and the classic novel Midnight’s Children.
