21st LIT: World Literature

• ASIAN LITERATURE

  •  East Asian Literature: Chinese, Japanese and Korean
  •  Central Asian Literature: Bengali, Indian, Pakistani and Tamil
  •  West Asian Literature: Arabic, Persian and Turkish
  •  Southeast Asian Literature: Philippine
• Representative Texts and Authors from Asia

  1. Miguel Syjuco (Philippines) - Ilustrado
  2. Bi Feiyu (China) - Three Sisters, screenplay for Shanghai Triad
  3. Shin Kyung Sook (South Korea) - Please Look After Mother
  4. Govind Vinayak Karandikar (India) - The Wheel
  5. Yosuke Tanaka (Japan) - A Day When the Mountains are Visible, Sweet Ultramarine Dreams
  6. Haruki Murakami (Japan) - Norwegian Wood, South of the Border West of the Sun
• Miguel Syjuco (Philippines)

  •  Filipino writer from Manila
  • Grand prize winner of 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize for his novel Ilustrado
• Bi FeiYu (China)

  • works are known for their complex portrayal of the "female psyche
  • some of the highest literary awards in China
  • wrote Three Sisters
  • also wrote the screenplay for Zhang Yimou's 1996 film Shanghai Triad
• Ilustrado – with light shading of New York noir and American thriller; tells the story of a young writer’s apprentice tasked with the self-appointed mission of writing an account of his deceased master’s life. The action that follows takes readers on a journey of metacriticism, which does well to entertain while asking some serious questions about the state of Filipino literature as a whole, written by Miguel Syjuco (Philippines)
• Three Sisters : an intense and invigorating examination of personality and rampant individualism that’s setin the context of high-Communist China in the years of the Cultural Revolution, does well to draw its readers in with a plethora of storylines that touch on vice, sex, Machiavellian power plays and contemporary politics all at the same time. With its focus on female characters and their interactions with male patriarchs in the China all around them, its general success was galvanized in 2010, when it garnered the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Asian Literature
• Shin Kyung Sook (South Korea)

  • became the first Korean writer to win the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012 for her novel Please Look After Mother
  • amongst the most highly regarded contemporary writers
  • has won major literary prizes including the Manhae Literature Prize, the Dong-In Literary Award and the YiSang Literary Prize
  • prose is especially prized for its focus on exploring the psychological depths of the human mind.
• Please Look After Mother - driven by the guilt of those closest to ‘Mother’, the saintly, sacrificial old woman who has gone missing in the center of Seoul. Alternating in perspective, from first to second to third person, the novel veers from near accusatory to reflective and explores themes of family in the midst of South Korea’s rapid urbanization and modernization of the past decade, written by Shin Kyung Sook (South Korea)
• Govind Vinayak Karandikar (India)

  Better known as Vinda

  Indian poet, writer, literary critic and translator of Marathi language

  Writer of The Wheel
• Yosuke Tanaka (Japan)

  • Born in Tokyo in 1969
  • Debuted in Eureka at the age of 19
  • Has written poems with stylistic diversity and unique sense of humor
  • Wrote A Day When the Mountains are Visible and Sweet Ultramarine Dreams
  • emerged as the new poetic sensitivity in Japan, and is sure to remain one of the most important figures in 21st – century Japanese poetry
• Haruki Murakami (Japan)

  • a famous Japanese author whose works have been translated into several languagescultural soo
  • not only arguably the most experimental Japanese novelist to have been translated into English, but is also the most popular, with sales in the millions worldwide
  • now the most widely-read Japanese novelist of his generation; he has won virtually every prize in Japanhas to offer, including its greatest, the “Yomiuri Literary Prize”
• Literary Genres in Asian Literature

  1. Haiku
  2. Science Fiction
  3. Folklore
• Science Fiction

  • a genre of speculative fiction that contains imagined elements that don’t exist in the real world
  • spans a wide range of themes that often explore time travel, space travel, are set in the future, and deal with the consequences of technological and scientific advances
  • Rayamana (5th-4th Century BC) and Rigveda Collection of Sanskrit Hymns (1700-1100 BC)
• Ramayana (5th to 4th century BC) - includes Vimana flying machines able to travel into space or underwater, and destroy entire cities using advanced weapons.

  
  

  Rigveda collection of Sanskrit hymns (1700–1100 BC) - "mechanical birds" that are seen "jumping into space speedily with a craft using fire and water
• Folklore

  • expressive body of culture shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group (dongwugushi) and many more different styles of stories.
  •  include oral traditions such as tales, proverbs and jokes
  •  Folk Songs: epics (Shishi), and narrative poems (Xushishi) similar to long ballads or lyrical fairy tales
  •  wedding songs (kujiage), drinking songs (jiuge), love songs (quingge), and work songs (laodongge
  •  Spoken narratives such as folktales (minjiangushi), myths (shenhua), legends (chuanshuo), animal tales
• Representative Texts and Authors from North America:

  1. James Brendan Patterson (New York) - Mrs. Bridge, The Thomas Berryman Number
  2. Nicholas Sparks (North Carolina) - The Choice, The Longest Ride, The Best of Me, Safe Haven
  3. John Green (Indianapolis, Indiana) - Looking for Alaska, The Fault in our Stars
  4. Suzanne Collins (Hartford, Connecticut) - The Hunger Games
  5. Billy Collins (New York) - Fishing on the Susquehanna in July
• James Brendan Patterson (New York)

  •  was born on March 22, 1947, in Newburgh, New York
  •  influenced by Evan S. Connell's 1959 debut novel Mrs. Bridge.
  •  published his first novel in 1976 called The Thomas Berryman Number
  •  holds The New York Times record for most #1 New York Times bestsellers by a single author, a total of 67, which is also a Guinness World Record.
  •  awards include the Edgar Award, the BCA Mystery Guild's Thriller of the Year, the International Thriller of the Year award, and the Children's Choice Book Award for Author of the Year.
• Nicholas Sparks (North Carolina)

  •  an American novelist, screenwriter, and philanthropist
  •  has published twenty-one novels and two non-fiction books, all of which have been New York Times bestsellers, with over 115 million copies sold worldwide in more than 50 languages. Eleven of his novels have been adapted to film, including The Choice, The Longest Ride, The Best of Me, Safe Haven (on all of which he served as a producer), and The Notebook, with a cumulative domestic box office totaling more than $574M.
• John Green (Indianapolis, Indiana)

  •  an American author and YouTube content creator
  •  won the 2006 Printz Award for his debut novel, Looking for Alaska, and his fourth solo novel, The Fault in Our Stars, debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list in January 2012.
  •  After graduating from college, Green spent five months working as a
  •  also critiqued books for The New York Times Book Review and created original radio essays for NPR's AllThings Considered and WBEZ, Chicago's public radio station
• Suzanne Collins (Hartford, Connecticut)

  • Wrote The Hunger Games
  • was named one of Time magazine's most influential people of 2010
  •  had become the best-selling Kindle author of all time
• The Hunger Games: the first book of a trilogy, partly inspired by the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Another inspiration was her father's career in the Air Force, which gave her insight to poverty, starvation, and the effects of war, was on The New York Times Best Seller list for more than 60 weeks in a row. Lions acquired worldwide distribution rights to a film adaptation of The Hunger Games, produced by Nina Jacobson's Color Force production company. It was written by Suzanne Collins (Hartford, Connecticut)
• Billy Collins (New York)

  • Works were able to connect with the masses.
  •  was born in New York, New York on March 22, 1941.
  •  was Poet Laureate of the United States between 2001 and 2003.
  •  reflects modern American life.
  •  His work is so popular because he uses the everyday situations that most Americans deal with to connect with audiences, caters to middle class Americans and their struggles.
• Literary Genres in North American Literature:

  1. Speculative Fiction - Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood, Canadian), The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins, American)
  2. Graphic Novel - Watchmen (Allan Moore, English), Dracula (Bram Stoker, Irish)
  3. Young Adult Fiction - The Fault in Our Stars (John Green, American), To All the Boys I've Loved Before (Jenny Han, American)
  4. Chick Lit - The Devil Wears Prada (Lauren Weisberger, American), Spellbound (Jane Green, English)
  5. Fan Fiction - Twilight Saga (Stephanie Meyer, American)
  6. Wattpad - Chasing Red (Isabelle Ronin, Canadian)
• GENRE: Speculative Fiction

  • author speculates assumes upon the results of changing what’s real or possible, not how a character would react to a certain event
  •  first observed and coined by American fictionist Robert Heinlein
  •  Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (Canadian) and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (American)
• GENRE: Graphic Novel

  • a novel in comic strip format
  •  a book format in which a narrative is conveyed with sequential art and a book written and illustrated in the style of a comic book
  •  was formally introduced by American Cartoonist Richard Kyle, in 1964
  •  Watchmen by Allan Moore (English) and Dracula by Bram Stoker (Irish)
• GENRE: Young Adult Fiction

  • also known as Young-Adult literature
  •  written for readers from 12 to 18 years of age
  •  expansive and include most of those found in adult fiction
  •  common themes include friendship, first love, relationships and identity
  •  The Fault In Our Stars by John Green (American) and To all the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han(American)
• GENRE: Chick Lit

  • concentrating on young women and their emotional lives, American original fiction genre that tackles the issue of modern literary genres
  • The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger (American) and Spellbound by Jane Green (English)
• GENRE: Fan Fiction

  • a fiction about characters or settings from an original work of fiction, created by fans of that work rather than by its creator, fans may maintain the creator’s characters and settings or add their own
  • Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer (American)
• GENRE: Wattpad

  • an Internet community for readers and writers to publish new user-generated stories in different genres, including classics, general fiction, historical fiction, non-fiction, poetry, fanfiction, spiritual, humor and teen fiction
  • aims to create social communities around stories from both amateur and established writers
• European Literature:

  • Modern Writers: English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Polish, German, Italian, Modern Greek, Czech, and Russian, Scandinavians and Irish
  •  Classical Works: Latin, Ancient Greek, Old Norse, Medieval French and the Italian Tuscan dialect of the renaissance
  •  synonym for Western Literature, a literature written in the context of Western culture in the language of Europe
  •  Western Canon: Homer in Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil in Aeneid, Dante in Divine Comedy, and Chaucer in CanterburyTales
• Representative Text and Authors in European Literature:

  • Joanne/JK Rowling (Yate, Gloucestershire) - Harry Potter series, Cormoran Strike Series
  • Stephen Edwin King/Richard Bachman (Portland, Maine) - Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork
  • Neil Richard Mackinnon Gaiman (Portchester, Hampshire, England) - Duran Duran Biography, Violent Cases
  • George R.R. Martin (America) - A Song of Ice and Fire, Dying of the Light
• Joanne Rowling/JK Rowling

  • born in Yate, Gloucestershire
  •  a British writer and philanthropist
  •  wrote the Harry Potter film series and several works under the pseudonym Robert Galibraith
  • Named as the world’s first billionaire author according to Forbes and has lived a “rags to riches” life.
  • Was also named a runner-up by Time Magazine in its 2007 Person of the Year
  •  Was also appointed as a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour at the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to Literature and philanthropy
  •  in October 2020, was named as the “Most Influential Woman in Britain.”
• JK Rowling wrote crime fiction under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, like Cormoran Strike Series: The Cuckoos Calling 2013, The Silkworm (2014), Career of Evil 2015, Lethal White (2018), and Troubled Blood (2020); The Casual Vacancy in 2012 the books for adult readers; and The Ickabogin 2020 for children as the latest
• Harry Potter Film Series:

  1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
  2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
  3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
  4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
  5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
  6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
  7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows
• Stephen Edwin King (Richard Bachman)

  • Born in Portland, Maine
  • American writer of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, science-fiction, and fantasy novels
  • Many books adapted into films, TV shows, miniseries, and comics
  • Described as the "King of Horror"
  • Graduated in English in 1970, initially worked in laundry
  • Became English educator at Hampden Academy in late 1971
  • Married Tabitha Spruce in 1971
  • Published online serialized horror novel “The Plant” in 2000
  • Wrote digital novella “Riding Bullet” in 2000
• Stephen Edwin King (Richard Bachman):

  • Started column in Entertainment Weekly in August 2003
  • Works include "Rage" (9177), "The Long Walk" (1979), "Roadwork" (1981), "The Running Man" (1982), "Thinner" (1984), "The Cell" (2006), "Duma Key" (2008), "Just After Sunset" (2008), "Ur" (2009), "Throttle" (co-written with Joe Hill), "The Dark, No Stars" (2010)
  • Nominated for 2012 World Fantasy Award Best Novel
  • "Mr. Mercedes" (2013) inspired by true event
  • "Finders Keepers" (2015)
  • "End of Watch" (2016)
  • "The Outsider" (2018)
  • "The Institute" (2019)
• Neil Richard Mackinnon Gaiman

  • Born in Portchester, Hampshire, England as Neil Richard Gaiman
  • Learned to read at age four
  • Started writing career in England as a journalist
  • British writer known for fantasy tales with darkly humorous tone
  • Credited as one of creators of modern comics
  • Work spans various genres and reaches audiences of all ages
  • Listed in Dictionary of Literary Biography as top ten living post-modern writers
  • Prolific creator of prose, poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics, and drama
• Neil Richard Mackinnon Gaiman:

  • Biography books: Duran Duran biography, biography of Douglas Adams, "Don’t Panic: The Official Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Companion"
  • Graphic novel: "Violent Cases" (1987) with Dave McKean, "Black Orchid" (1988), "The Sandman" series (1989)
  • "The Sandman" became first comic to receive literary award, 1991 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story
  • Novels: "Good Omens" (with Terry Pratchett, 1990), "Neverwhere" (1996), "Stardust" (1999; film in 2007)
  • Children’s books: "Coraline" (2002; film in 2009), "InterWorld" (2007; with Michael Reaves)
• Neil Richard Mackinnon Gaiman

  • Received Newbery Medal for distinguished contribution to children's literature for "The Graveyard Book" (2008)
  • Wrote adult novel "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" (2013)
  • Active user of Twitter with over 2.7 million followers: @neilhimself
• George Raymond Richard Martin (GRRM / George R.R. Martin)

  • American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and television producer
  • Known for the epic fantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire"
  • Series adapted into HBO's "Game of Thrones" (2011)
  • Graduated summa cum laude with B.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism
  • Completed M.S. in Journalism from Medill the following year
  • First sale: “The Hero”, Sold to Galaxy magazine, published in February 1971 issue
  • “With Morning Comes Mistfall”: first story nominated for Hugo Awards and Nebula Awards