Author	World Novelists: Title	Vol#	Nationality	Gale Lit Index	Bloom/ Twayne/ Other
Abe, Kobo	Woman in the Dunes, The               Niki Jumpei, an amateur entomologist in pursuit of a rare specimen of beetle, wanders into a strange seaside village, whose residents all live in sandpits. He is taken prisoner, and, along with a widow cast out by the community, he is forced to move into her sandpit and continually shovel away the sand that threatens to take over the village. In Niki's struggles to escape his prison and his developing relationship with the woman, he gradually comes to understand the existential nature of life.	22	Japanese	Yes	N/N/N
Achebe, Chinua	Things Fall Apart          Traces The growing friction between village leaders and Europeans determined to save the heathen souls of Africa. But its hero, a noble man who is driven by destructive forces, speaks a universal tongue.	2	Nigerian	Yes	N/N/N
Aeneid	Virgil  Virgil's epic poem in verse translation describing the fall of Troy. (Epic for Students Vol. 1)		Roman	No	Y/N/N
Allende, Isabel	Daughter of Fortune     One of Allende's main themes is that of patriarchy, which makes reference to a society in which men make all the rules, thus having authority over women and children.	18	Chilean	Yes	Y/N/N
Allende, Isabel	House of the Spirits      The Trueba family embodies strong feelings from the beginning of the 20th century through the assassination of Allende in 1973.	6	Chilean	Yes	Y/N/N
Atwood,   Margaret Eleanor	Alias Grace    In this novel, author Margaret Atwood retells the story of Grace Marks, a real nineteenth-century Canadian woman who was accused of and spent thirty years in jail for the murder of two people.	19	Canadian	Yes	N/N/N
Atwood,   Margaret Eleanor	Cat's Eye          Although she is a successful middle-aged painter, Risley does not have a secure sense of identity or self-worth. In Jon's studio in Toronto, she confesses that sometimes it is all she can do to drag herself out of bed in the morning.	14	Canadian	Yes	N/N/Y
Atwood,   Margaret Eleanor	Handmaid's Tale, The            Offred, a Handmaid, describes life in what was once the United States, now the Republic of Gilead, a shockingly repressive and intolerant monotheocracy, in a satirical tour de force set in the near future.	4	Canadian	Yes	Y/N/N
Atwood,   Margaret Eleanor	Surfacing              A woman's haunting quest for identity and truth. A nameless narrator travels to an island cabin in Northern Quebec, where she spent her childhood, to search for her missing father. The truth about her own life surfaces, as well as the realization of her essential aloneness, despite the company of  others who are unaware of her experiences.	13	Canadian	Yes	Y/N/N
Bulgakov, Mikhail	Master and Margarita, The      A parable on power and its corruption, on good and evil and on human frailty and the strength of love. Equal parts fable, fantasy, political satire and slapstick. "A rich, funny, moving and bitter novel."	8	Russian	Yes	N/N/N
Camus, Albert	Plague, The    The theme of exile and separation is embodied in two characters, Rieux and Rambert, both of whom are separated from the women they love.	16	French	Yes	Y/N/N
Camus, Albert	Stranger, The  (L'etranger under author search)          An ordinary man is unwittingly caught up in a senseless murder in Algeria.	6	French	Web	Y/N/N
Cervantes, Miguel de	Don Quixote           Don Quixote of 16th-century Spain decides to become a knight with a horse and squire who honors a lady, but his horse is a nag, his squire a peasant, and his lady a prostitute.	8	Spanish	Yes	Y/N/N
Coetze, J.M.	Dusklands          Whether it is real or perceived supremacy, whether it is inherent or artificial authority, the theme of power dominates this book Dusklands.	21	South	Yes	N/N/N
Dante, Alighieri	Dante Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy)  A collection of critical essays on Dante's epic poem arranged in chronological order of publication. (Epic for Students Vol. 1)		Italian	Yes	Y/N/N
Dinesen, Isak	Out of Africa         Out of Africa is Isak Dinesen's memoir of her years in Africa, from 1914 to 1931, on a four-thousand-acre coffee plantation in the hills near Nairobi. She had come to Kenya from Denmark with her husband, and when they separated she stayed on to manage the farm by herself, visited frequently by her lover, the big-game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton.	9	Danish	Yes	N/N/N
Dostoyesvky, Fyodor	Crime and Punishment Raskolnikoff murders an old moneylender and her sister, and after a lengthy investigation a saintly prostitute Sonya convinces him to confess.	3	Russian	Yes	Y/N/N/
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor	Brothers Karamazov, The  Three sons of an old drunkard search for faith in God.	8	Russian	Yes	N/N/N
Dumas, Alexandre	Count of Monte Cristo, The        When Dantès escapes from prison, he is obsessed with gaining revenge against those who betrayed him, as well as rewarding those who remained loyal to him.	19	French	Yes	N/N/N
Dumas, Alexandre	Three Musketeers, The           The book begins with a quest: young d'Artagnan sets out for Paris to seek his fortune. Like many heroes of quests, he is of noble birth but humble circumstance and must rely on his own wits and talent to rise to the level of his destiny.	14	French	Yes	N/N/N
Eco, Umberto	Name of the Rose, The In the early 14th century, the English monk William, visiting at a Clunic abbey in Italy, solves a murder.	22	Italian	Yes	N/N/N
Emecheta, Buchi	Bride Price, The    When Aku-nna's father dies, the tribe demands that she, her mother, and brother go to live with her uncle, a situation that conflicts with the views she holds in the 1950s.	12	Nigerian	Yes	N/N/N
Esquivel, Laura	Like Water for Chocolate     At the beginning of the 20th century, Tita, the youngest of three daughters, is expected to serve her mother for the rest of her life, but in order to show her love to Pedro, who is engaged to her sister, Tita cooks for him.	5	Mexican	Yes	N/N/N
Flaubert, Gustave	Madame Bovary       When Emma first marries Charles, she does not have a clear sense of identity. However, she knows that she does not want to be stuck on the farm for the rest of her life.	14	French	Yes	Y/N/N
Fuentes, Carlos	Old Gringo, The             An old American author, perhaps Ambrose Bierce, disappears in Mexico in 1913 where he becomes a father figure to an American governess and a general in Pancho Villa's army.	8	Mexican	Yes	N/N/N
Gide, Andre	Immoralist, The         The central theme of The Immoralist is the growing self-awareness of a repressed homosexual whose natural inclinations are at odds with societal conventions.	21	French	Yes	N/N/N
Gordimer, Nadine	July's People (Julys People)      When South Africa is riven by war and the Smales, a white couple, take refuge in the village of their former servant July, their relationships are completely transformed.	4	South African	Yes	Y/N/N
Grahame, Kenneth	Wind in the Willows, The           The text is filled with occurrences of one animal offering food and/or shelter to another.	20	Scottish	Yes	N/N/N
Hesse, Hermann	Demian              The central theme of Demian is the process of discovering a deep, true, inner self.	15	Swiss	Yes	Y/N/N
Hesse, Hermann	Siddhartha        Blends elements of psychoanalysis and Asian religions to probe an Indian aristocrat's efforts to renounce sensual and material pleasures and discover ultimate spiritual truths.	6	Swiss	Yes	N/N/N
Hoeg, Peter	Smilla's Sense of Snow       Mathematics may seem like an unlikely theme for a book that is about the murder of a young child and the dangerous path the narrator must take to discover the motives of those responsible for the murder.	17	Danish	Yes	N/N/N
Homer	Iliad  Recounts the triumphs and defeats of the Greek and Trojan heroes during the Trojan War and the destruction of Troy by combined Greek armies. (Epic for Students Vol. 1)		Greek	Yes	Y/Y/N
Homer	Odyssey  Presents the classic poem concerning the wanderings of the hero Odysseus and his miraculous return to Ithaca and a faithful wife.		Greek	Yes	Y/Y/N
Hugo, Victor	Les Miserables  Escaped convict Jean Valjean risks his life to take care of a motherless young girl during the first half of the 19th century. (Epic for Students Vol. 2)		French	Yes	N/N/N
Hugo, Victor	Hunchback of Notre Dame, The     The most obvious is the abandonment of Quasimodo by his mother, who steals the more beautiful child, La Esmeralda, and exchanges her malformed son, who is left in the halls of the cathedral.	20	French	Yes	N/N/N
Hugo, Victor	Les Misérables        Escaped convict Jean Valjean risks his life to take care of a motherless young girl during the first half of the 19th century.	5	French	Yes	N/N/N
Huong, Duong Thu	Paradise of the Blind      Hang grows up in Vietnam in the shadow of the love of her mother and her aunt, and when lack of money stops her education, she becomes an export worker in the Soviet Union where she manages to retain her heritage.	23	Vietnamese	Yes	N/N/N
Japrisot, Sebastien	Very Long Engagement, A     The enduring nature of love is set against the destructiveness of war. Mathilde is so devoted to her fiancé that she tirelessly works to discover his fate and clings to the belief he is still alive.	18	French	Yes	N/N/N
Joyce,  James	Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A       Young Stephen Dedalus yearns to be an artist, but first must struggle against the forces of church, school, and society, which fetter his imagination and stifle his soul.	7	Irish	Yes	Y/N/Y
Kafka, Franz	Trial, The    Narrates the experiences and reactions of a respectable bank functionary after his abrupt arrest on an undisclosed charge.	7	Austrian	Yes	Y/N/N
Keneally, Thomas	Schindler's List      It is the story "of the pragmatic triumph of good over evil" and of the story of a man who is not "virtuous" in the customary sense.	17	Australia	Yes	N/N/N
Kertesz, Imre	Kaddish for a Child Not Born       A middle-aged writer and Holocaust survivor explains to a friend why he cannot bring a child into a world that allows such horrors as the Holocaust.	23	Jewish	Yes	N/N/N
Kinsella, W.P.	Shoeless Joe           Kinsella presents a strong contrast between traditional Christianity and what he regards as a truer, more life-promoting form of religion, mediated by the game of baseball.	15	Canadian	Yes	N/N/N
Kogawa, Joy Nozomi	Obasan         Pearl Harbor changes life in Vancouver for Naomi Nakane when the government takes property from her relatives and interns them.	3	Canadian	Yes	N/N/N
Kouyate, Dejeli    Mamoudou	Sundiata  A hunter from the north came with a prophecy that two hunters would come to the king with a very ugly woman whom he must marry, for she would bear him Mali's greatest king ever. (Epic for Students Vol. 1)		Malian	Yes	N/N/N
Kundera, Milan	Unbearable Lightness of Being, The    In his or her own way, each of the four main characters confronts and wrestles with the notion of love.	18	Czechos- lovakian	Yes	N/N/N
Lamming, George	In the Castle of My Skin           The story appropriately anatomizes this dynamic as it bears upon a nine-year-old boy in one of Barbados' small rural villages.  The relationship between colonial powers and their colonies, and the effects that this relationship has on the inhabitants of the colonies, is the enduring concern of George Lamming.	15	Barbadian	Yes	N/N/N
Laurence, Margaret	Stone Angel In Hagar Shipley, Margaret Laurence has created one of the boldest, most memorable characters in Canadian fiction. This is a study of old age and uncompromising pride. Hagar is almost 90, living with her elderly son, Marvin and his wife, Doris, both of whom she despises. The story is told in a series of flashbacks from Hagar's early childhood through her stormy marriage and loss of her favorite son. This novel is a keystone in Laurence's career.	11	Canadian	Yes	N/N/N
Lee, Lilian	Farewell My Concubine         Survival is a key theme in Farewell My Concubine. In the beginning of the novel, many Chinese people have a hard time just trying to acquire the basic necessities of food and shelter.	19	Chinese	Yes	N/N/N
Leroux, Gaston	Phantom of the Opera, The      The fact that The Phantom of the Opera takes place behind the scenes of the opera almost automatically draws readers’ attention to the disparity between reality and appearances.	20	French	Yes	N/N/N
Lonnrot, Elias	Kalevala  Begins with an account of the Creation - from a broken egg - and ends with an interpretation of the Virgin Birth. (Epic for Students Vol. 1)		Finnish	Yes	N/N/N
Lucan(us), Marcus    Annaeus	Pharsalia  Recounts the events surrounding the decisive battle fought near Pharsalus in 48 B.C. during the civil war between the forces of Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar. (Epic for Students Vol. 2)		Spanish	Yes	N/N/N
Lucretius	De rerum natura  Presents a comprehensive study of atomic theory, natural phenomena, free will, and religious fears and prejudices by the ancient Roman philosopher and poet, Titus Lucretius Carus. (Epic for Students Vol. 2)		Roman	Yes	N/N/N
Machiavelli, Niccolo	Prince, The             The Prince analyzes the often-violent means by which political power is seized and retained, and the circumstances in which it is lost. Above all, it provides a remarkably uncompromising picture of the true nature of power, no matter in what era or by whom it is exercised.	9	Italian	Web	N/N/Y
Mann, Thomas	Death in Venice      Mann describes von Aschenbach as an artist who has sacrificed his emotional life and distanced himself from the sensuous world to create beauty with his stories.	17	German	Yes	Y/N/N
Márquez,   Gabriel García	Love in the Time of Cholera          Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza consummate their passion at the beginning of the 20th century after having waited over 50 years.	1	Colombian	Yes	Y/N/N
Márquez, Gabriel    García	One Hundred Years of Solitude        Tells the story of the Buendia family, set against the background of the evolution and eventual decadence of a small South American town.	5	Colombian	Yes	Y/N/N
Marquez,   Gabriel Garcia	Chronicle of a Death Foretold      The Nobel laureate weaves a story of a fantastic wedding, the return of the bride to her parents, her brothers' resolve to murder her corruptor, and the townspeoples' refusal to depart from routine.	10	Colombian	Yes	Y/N/N
Mori, Kyoko	Shizuko's Daughter   The novel begins with the suicide of Shizuko, Yuki’s mother; this suicide flavors the rest of the story, hanging over all of the events of Yuki’s life.	15	Japanese	Yes	N/N/N
Murdoch, Iris	Under the Net          Jake loves Anna, who loves Hugo, who loves Sadie, who loves Jake. Like a Shakespearian drama, unrequited love weaves through this novel.	18	Irish	Yes	N/N/N
Ondaatje, Michael	English Patient, The                  In Cairo, a man meets a married woman with whom he falls in love, but the war keeps them apart and destroys her while he, severely burned, lives to tell their story to a nurse caring for him in an abandoned Tuscan villa.	23	Canadian/ Sri Lankan	Yes	N/N/N
Paton, Alan	Cry, the Beloved Country A Zulu country parson arrives in Johannesburg and finds that his sister has become a prostitute and his son a murderer.	3	South African	Yes	N/Y/Y
Paton, Alan	Too Late the Phalarope       After a popular white policeman confides in a native South African girl, his family suffers humiliation.	12	South African	Yes	N/Y/Y
Roy, Arundhati	God of Small Things, The        In 1969 in Kerala, India, Rahel and her twin brother, Estha, struggle to forge a childhood for themselves amid the destrucion of their family life, as they discover that the entire world can be transformed in a single moment.	22	Indian	Yes	N/N/N
Rushdie, Salman	Midnight's Children            The life of a man born at the moment of India's independence becomes inextricably linked to that of his nation and is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirror modern India's course.	23	Indian	Yes	Y/N/N
Rushdie, Salman	Satanic Verses, The             Gibreel Farishta, India's legendary movie star, and Saladin Chamcha, the man of a thousand voices, fall earthward from a bombed jet toward the sea, singing rival verses in an eternal wrestling match between good and evil.	22	Indian	Yes	Y/N/N
Sartre, Jean-Paul	Nausea        Roquentin begins writing his diary because he has noticed a subtle change in his perceptions of himself and the world around him. He hopes that by recording his daily perceptions, he will be able to make sense of the nature of this change, which he describes as “an abstract change without object.”	21	French	Yes	N/N/N
Shields, Carol	Stone Diaries, The              Daisy Goodwill Flett, whose mother died during Daisy's birth in 1905, moves from Canada to Indiana with her stonecutter father and lives an ordinary life against the backdrop of 20th-century events.	23	Canadian	Yes	N/N/N
Shikibu, Murasaki	The Tale of Genji  In the Heian period, Prince Genji associates with a variety of court women. (Epic for Students Vol. 2)		Japanese	Yes	N/N/N
Solzhenitsyn,    Alexander	One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich     One day in 1951, Ivan Denisovich continues the rituals he has created during eight years' imprisonment in a Stalinist labor camp in Siberia.	6	Russian	Yes	Y/N/Y
Stevenson,    Robert Louis	Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde       This fascinating novel explores the curious turnings of human character through the strange case of Dr. Jekyll, a kindly scientist who by night takes on his stunted evil self, Mr. Hyde. Anticipating modern psychology, Jekyll And Hyde is a brilliantly original study of man's dual nature — as well as an immortal tale of suspense and terror.	11	Scottish	Yes	N/N/N
Stoker, Bram	Dracula   As several characters note in the novel, a person's physical life is of secondary importance to the person's eternal life, which can be jeopardized if the person is made evil by a vampire like Dracula.	18	Irish	Yes	Y/N/N
Taaao, Torquato	Gerusalemme Liberata  A verse epic on the 11th-century First Crusade and the love of Tancred and Clorinda. (Epic for Students Vol. 2)		Italian	Yes	N/N/N
Tolkien, J.R.R.	Lord of the Rings  An epic detailing the Great War of the Ring, a struggle between good and evil in Middle-Earth, in which the tiny Hobbits play a key role.		South African	Yes	N/N/N
Tolstoy, Leo	War and Peace           People from diverse social strata respond to Napoleon's invasion of Russia.	10	Russian	Yes	Y/N/N
Tolstoy, Leo	War and Peace  People from diverse social strata respond to Napoleon's invasion of Russia. (Epic for Students Vol. 2)		Russian	Yes	Y/Y/N
Turgenev, Ivan	Fathers and Sons       The gap between the older and younger generation is very pronounced, especially between fathers and their sons.	16	Russian	Yes	Y/N/N
Voltaire	Candide      The story of Candide, a naive youth who is conscripted, shipwrecked, robbed, and tortured by the Inquisition without losing his will to live.	7	French	Yes	Y/N/N
Walcott, Derek	Omeros  Follows the wanderings of a present-day Odysseus and the inconsolable sufferings of those who are displaced and traveling with trepidation toward their homes. (Epic for Students Vol. 1)		West Indian	Yes	Y/N/N
Wilde, Oscar	Picture of Dorian Gray, The        The novel centers on Dorian Gray, a young man of great beauty. When he meets Lord Henry Wotton, Lord Henry inspires him with a vision of life in which the pursuit of beauty through sensual pleasure is valued above ethical or moral concerns.	20	Irish	Yes	N/N/N
Yoshimoto, Banana      (Mahoko)	Kitchen   Relates the experiences of two free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan.	7	Japanese	Yes	N/N/N