21st literature

• Asia and Africa


  • The largest continent in the world
  • Has a vast literary tradition in terms of scope and length of existence
• Literature in the Eastern hemisphere


  • Prospered and mirrored the developments in religion, war, and politics
• It is wise to study the Asian literature by geographical region
• China


  • One of the world's cradles of civilization
  • Has started its unbroken literary tradition in the 14th century BCE
• Preservation of the Chinese language

  • Both spoken and written
  • Has made the immeasurable prolonged existence of their literary traditions possible
  • It has retained its reputation by keeping the fundamentals of its identity intact
• Poets of the Tang Dynasty

  • Du Fu
  • Li Po
  • Wang Wei
• Chinese writers in modern times are still creative and productive and have kept the Chinese literary tradition prosperous
• Du Fu


  • Also known as Tu fu
  • According to many literary critics, he was the greatest Chinese poet of all time
  • He wrote the poem 'The Ballad of the Army Cats' which is about conscription and with hidden satire that speaks of the noticeable luxury of the court
• Li Po


  • Also known as Li Bai
  • A Chinese poet who is a competitor of Du Fu as China's greatest poet
  • He was romantic in his personal life and his poetry
  • His works are known for its conversational tone and vivid imagery
  • He wrote the poem 'Alone and Drinking under the Moon' that deals with the ancient social custom of drinking
• Wang Wei


  • He was a poet, painter, musician, and statesman during the Tang dynasty
  • He was the established founder of the respected Southern school of painter-poets
  • Many of his best poems were inspired by the local landscape
• Mo Yan


  • He was a fictionist who won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature
  • His first novel was 'Red Sorghum', and still his best-known work
  • It tells the story of the Chinese battling Japanese intruders as well as each other during the 1930s
  • It relates the story of a family in a rural area in Shandong Province during this turbulent time
• Yu Hua


  • He was a world-acclaimed short story writer and considered as a champion for Chinese meta-fictional or postmodernist writing
  • His widely acclaimed novel 'To Live' describes the struggles endured by the son of a wealthy land-owner while historical events caused and extended by the Chinese Revolution are fundamentally altering the nature of Chinese society
• Korea


  • Korea's literary tradition is greatly influenced by China's cultural dominance
  • As early as the 4th century CE, Korean poets wrote literary pieces in Classical Chinese poetry
  • Transformations happened at the 7th century
  • Hangul, Korea's distinct writing system and national alphabet, is developed in the 15th century that gave new beginnings of Korean literature
• Korean literature in contemporary times


  • The Korean War has made a significant mark
  • In 1950, the themes present in the literary works are about alienation, conscience, disintegration and self-identity
• Ch'oe Nam-Son


  • He was considered a prominent historian, pioneering poet and publisher in the Korean literature
  • He was also a leading member of the modern literary movement and became notable in pioneering modern Korean poetry
  • One of his works, the poem 'The Ocean to the Youth' made him a widely acclaimed poet
  • The poem aimed to produce cultural reform
  • He sought to bring modern knowledge about the world to the youth of Korea
• Yi Kwang Su


  • He was also the one who launched the modern literary movement together with Choe Nam-Seon
  • He was a novelist and wrote the first Korean novel 'The Heartless' and became well-known because of it
  • It was a description of the crossroads at which Korea found itself stranded between tradition and modernity, and undergoing conflict between social realities and traditional ideals
• Yun Hunggil


  South Korean novelist who won the 1977 Korean Literature Writers Award
• Changma


  Classic novel written by Yun Hunggil, about a post-war family with two grandmothers and their shared grandson
• Pak Kyongni


  South Korean poet and novelist who wrote the 21-volume epic novel Toji (The Land), chronicling Korean history from 1897 to 1945
• Japan has a rich and unique literary history, influenced by the Chinese language and literature
• Haiku


  • Short descriptive poem with 17 syllables, a world-renowned poetic genre in Japan
• Noh


  • Traditional Japanese theatrical form, one of the oldest extant theatrical forms in the world
• Kabuki


  • Traditional Japanese popular drama with singing and dancing performed in a highly stylized manner
• Japanese literature reflects simple yet complex, imperfect yet abounding with beauty - the traditional Japanese cultural identity
• In contemporary times, Western influences take part in Japanese literature, specifically in the pioneering of modern Japanese novels, translations of poetry, and reinventions of traditional Japanese poetic forms like haiku and tanka
• Abe Kobo


  Japanese novelist and playwright, also known by the pseudonym Abe Kimifusa, who wrote the best-known play Tomodachi (Friends) and won the 1967 Akutagawa Award
• Kimitake Hiraoka (Mishima Yukio)


  The most important Japanese novelist of the 20th century, one of the finalists for the 1963 Nobel Prize for Literature, and winner of numerous awards including the Yomiuri Prize for his novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
• Ryūnoske Akutagawa


  Japanese writer regarded as the Father of the Japanese Short Story, who wrote the short story "Rashomon"
• The Akutagawa Prize, Japan's premier literary award, was named after Ryūnoske Akutagawa to honor his memory after he died by committing suicide
• Haruki Murakami


  Japanese novelist who won the International Jerusalem Prize and the Gunzou Literature Prize for his first novel "Hear the Wind Sing", which featured episodes in the life of an unnamed protagonist and his friend the Rat
• Islam is the foundation of culture in the Middle East, and its literary tradition has grown and influenced others like Persian, Byzantine, and Andalusian traditions
• Arabic literature in contemporary times, Arabic writers experience difficulties in producing their literary texts due to the issue of freedom of expression and the tension between religious and secular movements
• Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqgad


  Egyptian poet, journalist and literary critic, innovator of 20th-century Arabic poetry and criticism, famous for his Abariyat series
• Taha Hussein


  Egyptian Arabic literature novelist, essayist, critic, wrote an outstanding autobiography about his childhood in a small village in Egyptian literature, nicknamed "The Dean"
• Hali Ahmad Said Esber (Adonis)


  Award-winning Syrian-born Lebanese poet, literary critic, leader of the modernist movement in contemporary Arabic poetry, recipient of the 2011 Goethe Prize and the 2017 PEN/Nabokov Award
• Etgar Keret


  Israeli writer known for his short stories, graphic novels, and scriptwriting for film and television, his 2019 book "Fly Already" won Israel's prestigious Sapir Prize in Literature
• South and Southeast Asia is the cultural giant over South Asia
• Hallmark writings of Indian literature


  • Veda, the Brahmanas, and the Upanishads
• The Veda written in the Sanskrit language introduced the birth of Indian literary works

  1500 BCE
• Written literature in India appeared

  16th century