Study guides: popular books, letter a

George Orwell has always been a loud critic of the social wrongdoings and worrying tendencies around the globe. No wonder he took a strong position about the Soviet Union regime and openly criticized Stalin. In 1945 George wrote a dystopian novella about evolution of animals that expel their human master, Manor Farm owner Mister Jones. The fight for independence from cruel farmer ends up with...

In 1729 Jonathan Swift published his work that carried an immensely long title but has become known under “A Modest Proposal” name. The book is a major social text exploring the living conditions in Ireland and the attitude towards the Irish from other nationalities. Today it’s hard to imagine a situation in which a parent would sell his kid, but this concept is exactly what...

A Passage to India is a fiction novel by E. M. Forster that shows us the relationships between English and Indian people during the time of the British colonization. The main hero of the story is an Indian Muslim Aziz, who tries to be as open to the English people as possible, as long as they respect him and his traditions. But in the end, he falls victim of the bigoted attitude that always sees...

Antigone is an eternal work of art that transcends time, literary style, authorship, and taste. It’s one of the signature Sophocles plays tightly intermingled with Oedipus and Colonus. The events of the play happen in Ancient Greece. After the death of Thebes ruler Oedipus, his sons are faced with a tough task of dividing and conquering. Since it has never been an easy thing to do...

“Arms and the Man” is a jovial comedy by George Bernard Shaw that portrays such serious issues as war, unrequited love and scandal so lightheartedly that we can’t help laughing. The clever usage of double entendre jokes only enhances this atmosphere. The real Serbo-Bulgarian war turns into a story told by the veterans to boast in the company of fellow soldiers: funny and with...

“A Tale of Two Cities” was published in Charles Dickens’ own magazine in 1859. He gained inspiration for the plot from another play he participated in as an actor at the time of writing. The book also has a right to be called historical, since the author referred to the French Revolution survivals while collecting the facts for the text. The events take place in the 18th century...

Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” in 1843 and it has become a legendary scenario for numerous cartoons, movies and theater plays. It’s hard to imagine it now that the story was written at a period when Britain was just discovering its Christmas traditions of decorating a tree, singing carols and cooking turkey. Ebenezer Scrooge is a mean old man who is stingy with money...

There exist play writers that represent the best personification of theatre. Henrik Ibsen is one of them. In his 1879 play “A Doll’s House”, he managed to combine mastery of realism, the suspense of events, depth of colorful characters and beauty of words. There are a lot of words said about the lack of opportunities smart and talented women had in the 19th century. “A...

The bitter and satirical play of Henrik Ibsen was, to the great extent, his answer to the reaction of the critics to his previous work, “Ghosts”. The play was named scandalous, because the author dared to discuss such problems as adultery and syphilis that was too much for the prudish a society of that time. As a result, Henrik Ibsen dedicated his play to the problem of a person...

“Angela's Ashes” is memoirs by the Irish-American author Frank McCourt that depicts his poor childhood in Limerick. It is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. The book, which brought the author Pulitzer Prize for 1997. Poverty drove the Irish across the ocean to America, and it drove them back during the Great Depression. The family of Frank McCourt was forced to leave...

This novel written by Mark Twain is sometimes called the “Don Quixote vice versa”. This comparison indeed has something in it. The engineer from the Mark Twain’s time, Hank Morgan, is somehow transported to the times of King Arthur. But unlike Don Quixote, the last knight errant, Morgan considers himself the only pragmatic man in the land of hopeless romantics. He immediately...

William Faulkner has earned himself a title of the frontman of the modern literature. Experimenting with different forms and literary maneuvers, he created new ways to deliver a message and not once managed to surprise the reader. When writing “As I Lay Dying”, he invested a lot of thoughts and planning into making it clear and concise in form, yet deep and fascinating in meaning. He...

“Alas, Babylon” was written by Pat Frank in 1959 and it became a bestseller almost immediately. As Tolkien for the fantasy genre or Orwell for the future dystopian books, Pat Frank became a “grandfather” of all postapocalyptic fiction. “Alas, Babylon” shows us the bleak future after the nuclear war that devastated the world. The small town in the middle of...

“A Rose for Emily” is one of the most quotable and well-known works of William Faulkner. It is centered on author’s favorite topic – change, strangeness, openness, and flexibility. Even though some might find other meanings in it and they will be right. Located in a fictional city, the story can be summarized as a gothic plot about courage and patience. The events happen...

In writing his novel “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”, James Joyce, one of the greatest masters of the thread of consciousness style in literature, managed to combine a political discourse with a fascinating plot. Together with the moments of epiphany, the book takes unexpected turns and will make for a very exciting reading. The events of the book are intermingled with...

“Absalom, Absalom” is a story of a single man, Thomas Sutpen, the local hero, told by several different people who knew him. The novel is quite difficult to read, because of the absence of any chronological order and the controversial memories of every person involved. While the young and curious protagonist starts to investigate the biography of Sutpen, the image of a flawless hero...

There’s an eternal battle over which of the Leo Tolstoy creations is more of a masterpiece: “Anna Karenina” or “War and Peace”. And while the latter will never loose its historic and political interest, “Anna Karenina” in its turn will live forever thanks to the glorifying concepts of female roles and family relationships of the late 1870s. The book...

Ayn Rand has been a witness to the most tumultuous times of the Russian history at the dawn of the civil war and social revolution. Having watched her family business perish and their wellbeing reduced to misery, she saw right through the corrupt system being built in the Soviet Union. Ever since the times she escaped Russia, she has been set on breaking the Soviet regime by exposing its damage...

“Anthony and Cleopatra” is a famous tragedy by William Shakespeare, based on the amazing and dramatic story of fatal love between Roman commander Mark Antony and the Queen of Egypt Cleopatra. It is a kind-of-history play about two of the most glorious societies in the Ancient World. Written in 1607–1608, this play absorbed a number of different themes that were presented in...