World Novelists: Title	Author	Vol#	Nationality	Gale Lit Index	Bloom/ Twayne/ Other
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.	Atwood,   Margaret Eleanor	19	Canadian	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Emecheta, Buchi	12	Nigerian	Yes	N/N/N
Brothers Karamazov, The  Three sons of an old drunkard search for faith in God.	Dostoyevsky, Fyodor	8	Russian	Yes	N/N/N
Candide      The story of Candide, a naive youth who is conscripted, shipwrecked, robbed, and tortured by the Inquisition without losing his will to live.	Voltaire	7	French	Yes	Y/N/N
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.	Atwood,   Margaret Eleanor	14	Canadian	Yes	N/N/Y
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.	Marquez,   Gabriel Garcia	10	Colombian	Yes	Y/N/N
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.	Dumas, Alexandre	19	French	Yes	N/N/N
Crime and Punishment Raskolnikoff murders an old moneylender and her sister, and after a lengthy investigation a saintly prostitute Sonya convinces him to confess.	Dostoyesvky, Fyodor	3	Russian	Yes	Y/N/N/
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.	Paton, Alan	3	South African	Yes	N/Y/Y
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)	Dante, Alighieri		Italian	Yes	Y/N/N
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.	Allende, Isabel	18	Chilean	Yes	Y/N/N
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)	Lucretius		Roman	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Mann, Thomas	17	German	Yes	Y/N/N
Demian              The central theme of Demian is the process of discovering a deep, true, inner self.	Hesse, Hermann	15	Swiss	Yes	Y/N/N
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.	Stevenson,    Robert Louis	11	Scottish	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Cervantes, Miguel de	8	Spanish	Yes	Y/N/N
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.	Stoker, Bram	18	Irish	Yes	Y/N/N
Dusklands          Whether it is real or perceived supremacy, whether it is inherent or artificial authority, the theme of power dominates this book Dusklands.	Coetze, J.M.	21	South	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Ondaatje, Michael	23	Canadian/ Sri Lankan	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Lee, Lilian	19	Chinese	Yes	N/N/N
Fathers and Sons       The gap between the older and younger generation is very pronounced, especially between fathers and their sons.	Turgenev, Ivan	16	Russian	Yes	Y/N/N
Gerusalemme Liberata  A verse epic on the 11th-century First Crusade and the love of Tancred and Clorinda. (Epic for Students Vol. 2)	Taaao, Torquato		Italian	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Roy, Arundhati	22	Indian	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Atwood,   Margaret Eleanor	4	Canadian	Yes	Y/N/N
House of the Spirits      The Trueba family embodies strong feelings from the beginning of the 20th century through the assassination of Allende in 1973.	Allende, Isabel	6	Chilean	Yes	Y/N/N
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.	Hugo, Victor	20	French	Yes	N/N/N
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)	Homer		Greek	Yes	Y/Y/N
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.	Gide, Andre	21	French	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Lamming, George	15	Barbadian	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Gordimer, Nadine	4	South African	Yes	Y/N/N
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.	Kertesz, Imre	23	Jewish	Yes	N/N/N
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)	Lonnrot, Elias		Finnish	Yes	N/N/N
Kitchen   Relates the experiences of two free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan.	Yoshimoto, Banana      (Mahoko)	7	Japanese	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Hugo, Victor	5	French	Yes	N/N/N
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)	Hugo, Victor		French	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Esquivel, Laura	5	Mexican	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Tolkien, J.R.R.		South African	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Márquez,   Gabriel García	1	Colombian	Yes	Y/N/N
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.	Flaubert, Gustave	14	French	Yes	Y/N/N
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."	Bulgakov, Mikhail	8	Russian	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Rushdie, Salman	23	Indian	Yes	Y/N/N
Name of the Rose, The In the early 14th century, the English monk William, visiting at a Clunic abbey in Italy, solves a murder.	Eco, Umberto	22	Italian	Yes	N/N/N
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.”	Sartre, Jean-Paul	21	French	Yes	N/N/N
Obasan         Pearl Harbor changes life in Vancouver for Naomi Nakane when the government takes property from her relatives and interns them.	Kogawa, Joy Nozomi	3	Canadian	Yes	N/N/N
Odyssey  Presents the classic poem concerning the wanderings of the hero Odysseus and his miraculous return to Ithaca and a faithful wife.	Homer		Greek	Yes	Y/Y/N
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.	Fuentes, Carlos	8	Mexican	Yes	N/N/N
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)	Walcott, Derek		West Indian	Yes	Y/N/N
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.	Solzhenitsyn, Alexander	6	Russian	Yes	Y/N/Y
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.	Márquez, Gabriel García	5	Colombian	Yes	Y/N/N
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.	Dinesen, Isak	9	Danish	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Huong, Duong Thu	23	Vietnamese	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Leroux, Gaston	20	French	Yes	N/N/N
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)	Lucan(us), Marcus    Annaeus		Spanish	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Wilde, Oscar	20	Irish	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Camus, Albert	16	French	Yes	Y/N/N
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.	Joyce,  James	7	Irish	Yes	Y/N/Y
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.	Machiavelli, Niccolo	9	Italian	Web	N/N/Y
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.	Rushdie, Salman	22	Indian	Yes	Y/N/N
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.	Keneally, Thomas	17	Australia	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Mori, Kyoko	15	Japanese	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Kinsella, W.P.	15	Canadian	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Hesse, Hermann	6	Swiss	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Hoeg, Peter	17	Danish	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Laurence, Margaret	11	Canadian	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Shields, Carol	23	Canadian	Yes	N/N/N
Stranger, The  (L'etranger under author search)          An ordinary man is unwittingly caught up in a senseless murder in Algeria.	Camus, Albert	6	French	Web	Y/N/N
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)	Kouyate, Dejeli    Mamoudou		Malian	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Atwood,   Margaret Eleanor	13	Canadian	Yes	Y/N/N
The Tale of Genji  In the Heian period, Prince Genji associates with a variety of court women. (Epic for Students Vol. 2)	Shikibu, Murasaki		Japanese	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Achebe, Chinua	2	Nigerian	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Dumas, Alexandre	14	French	Yes	N/N/N
Too Late the Phalarope       After a popular white policeman confides in a native South African girl, his family suffers humiliation.	Paton, Alan	12	South African	Yes	N/Y/Y
Trial, The    Narrates the experiences and reactions of a respectable bank functionary after his abrupt arrest on an undisclosed charge.	Kafka, Franz	7	Austrian	Yes	Y/N/N
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.	Kundera, Milan	18	Czechos- lovakian	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Murdoch, Iris	18	Irish	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Japrisot, Sebastien	18	French	Yes	N/N/N
Virgil  Virgil's epic poem in verse translation describing the fall of Troy. (Epic for Students Vol. 1)	Aeneid		Roman	No	Y/N/N
War and Peace           People from diverse social strata respond to Napoleon's invasion of Russia.	Tolstoy, Leo	10	Russian	Yes	Y/N/N
War and Peace  People from diverse social strata respond to Napoleon's invasion of Russia. (Epic for Students Vol. 2)	Tolstoy, Leo		Russian	Yes	Y/Y/N
Wind in the Willows, The           The text is filled with occurrences of one animal offering food and/or shelter to another.	Grahame, Kenneth	20	Scottish	Yes	N/N/N
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.	Abe, Kobo	22	Japanese	Yes	N/N/N