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As a key figure in the modernization of Bengali literature, Rabindranath Tagore wrote in every literary form that existed at the time: poetry, drama, prose, memoir, philosophy, musical lyrics. But he didn't write in every form all of the time, and...

The Government Inspector is one of the most famous Russian plays, renowned for its satirical portrayal of government officials and laced with apocalyptic, absurd overtones. Vladimir Nabokov praised the play, stating “The play begins with a...

Tracy Letts' black comedy August: Osage County was written in 2007 and premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago before transferring to Broadway and running for 648 performances. In 2008 it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was widely...

The Hairy Ape tells the story of the fall of Yank, a proud and powerful stoker working aboard a steamship. Though respected by his fellow workers, a chance encounter with a millionaire's daughter who disdains him as an "ape" leads to a vain quest...

Usually, love is part of everyday life, a matter of routine devotion and simple joys. But occasionally, love can hit like a storm, ripping you away from the ordinary passage of time, and from yourself. Sappho's "Fragment 31" speaks of this...

If Beale Street Could Talk is James Baldwin's sixth novel, published on June 17, 1974. It was published the year that Baldwin turned 50. The novel received ambivalent reviews following its publication, but in recent years its reputation has grown....

Chinua Achebe’s novel Arrow of God was published in 1964. This is Achebe’s third novel after his books No Longer At Ease and Things Fall Apart. Together these three books are often referred to as the African Trilogy. This book was published as...

John Dryden’s “A Song for St. Cecilia's Day" is a long-form poem published in 1687, in celebration of a religious holiday commemorating St. Cecilia, a Catholic martyr and patron saint of music and musicians. Dryden, in this poem, celebrates music...

An Unquiet Mind is a memoir written in 2009 by Dr. Kay Jamison, in which she recounts her lifelong struggle with manic-depressive illness. The tone of An Unquiet Mind varies between one of informal recollection of life events and one of a clinical...

Everything I Never Told You is the debut novel from Chinese-American author, Celeste Ng. The story begins with the drowning of Lydia Lee, a Chinese-American girl growing up in a small Ohio town in the 1970s. As the local police investigate the...

Hag-Seed is a 2016 novel by the prolific novelist Margaret Atwood and is the seventh book in Hogarth's "Hogarth Shakespeare" series. Like the other novels of the series, it is a standalone retelling of one of Shakespeare's classics.

In Hag-Seed, ...

Far From the Madding Crowd was first published in 1874. The fourth of Thomas Hardy’s novels, it marked a turning point in his career as his first major success; it was the second novel which he published under his own name (his first two...

Un Chien Andalou is a 1929 surrealist silent short film directed by the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel and co-written by Buñuel and the Spanish painter Salvador Dalí. Despite its brevity—at its original frame rate, it runs just over sixteen...

Released in 2006, Babel is an ensemble film written by Guillermo Arriaga and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. It is a complex non-linear drama that is the last in Iñárritu's "Death Trilogy" which includes Amores Perros and 21 Grams. It...

Despite the fact that Kate Chopin’s “The Storm” is one of the author's more anthologized works, not many readers are aware that this is actually a sequel to a previous story writtin in 1892 called "At the 'Cadian Ball." The central characters...

Proof is a play by American playwright David Auburn. After a development process at George Street Playhouse, the play premiered in 2000 Off Broadway, then transferred to Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre a few months later. It was directed by...

“Sure Thing” is a short romantic comedy written by the American playwright David Ives. It debuted at Manhattan Punch Line’s Festival of One-Act Comedies in 1988. This play was one part of Ives’ collection of six short plays called All in the...

West Side Story is the 1961 film adaptation of the wildly successful stage musical which had taken Broadway by storm just a few years earlier. The film was co-directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, who made history by becoming the first pair...

“The Wife of His Youth” (1898) was Charles W. Chesnutt’s proclamation of the death of the plantation myth of the black man as defined and constructed by the dialect tales, stories which appealed primarily to white readers. Chesnutt had found...

“The Altar” is a pattern poem, also known as a “hieroglyphic” poem. These are poems shaped like the thing they describe: in this case, an altar. The first known pattern poems were written in Ancient Greek between 325 BCE and 200 CE. While other...

Published in 2003, Private Peaceful is a young-adult novel by English author Michael Morpurgo, notable for his children's book War Horse. The book is written from the perspective of a soldier discussing his life experiences both before and during...

The Accidental Tourist is a novel written by the American author Anne Tyler in 1985. The novel revolves around a protagonist named Macon Leary, a middle-aged writer of travel guides. Macon and his wife of 20 years, Sarah, struggle to maintain...

"The Darling" is a short story by Anton Chekhov, written in December 1898. First published in The Family magazine, it was ultimately included in the nine volume of Chekhov's work, released by book publisher Adolph Marx. The story draws from...

This Coen Brothers movie, released in 2000, takes its title from a film made six decades earlier. In the 1941 Preston Sturges comedy Sullivan’s Travels, the title journey is undertaken by a popular director of comedy movies who has decided he...