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Topic challenges for Literature SE were first proposed and enacted in March 2017. The motivation for these, as well as to bring our users together in a community activity of reading the same books or stories together at roughly the same time, is to increase the diversity of literature covered on our site, as well as perhaps our own diversity of reading material.

We ran 26 topic challenges, with varying degrees of success, between April 2017 and July 2019, each one lasting for one month. After that we had a brief hiatus to discuss the issue of waning participation, and then re-ignited the topic challenges in October 2019 under a new system, which is described as follows.

Each topic challenge lasts for two months, and is announced one month in advance. Each month a new one begins, so that at any given time, there should be two overlapping topic challenges ongoing.

Topic challenges are proposed by posting an answer to this very meta question - everyone feel free to join in with an answer below! Each month the highest-voted answer will be chosen and a new meta post will be created for that topic challenge.

Guidelines for Voting on a Topic Challenge

Voting on these challenges is pretty simple, but make sure you do it with care and thought.

If the post fulfills the spirit of the reading challenge, and does indeed offer exposure to culture or thought that many people might not otherwise see, we'd suggest voting up.

If the post does not fulfill the spirit of the reading challenge, and does not offer exposure to new culture or thought, then we'd suggest voting down. And maybe leave a comment about why you're not sure it's a helpful challenge suggestion, because it's possible someone just misunderstood the purpose behind this.

The above is copied from the original thread. From the 2019 discussion, another potential criterion for topic challenge success emerged: the existence of shorter works that are available online as part of the challenge. Thus it might be suggested to bear this in mind when voting: a topic challenge is generally more likely to be a success if it includes some shorter works available online. But of course, feel free to vote however you see fit. Diversity of topics is the most important criterion.

Guidelines for Suggesting a Topic Challenge

Here are the most important principles, again taken from the original 2017 thread and the 2019 discussion. The bullet points below are also largely inspired by the original 2017 thread, but I've edited quite heavily for brevity.

Your challenge suggestion can be... honestly, whatever you'd like it to be. Please do make challenges that fall outside of what users of the site might predominantly already read. That's sort of why we're doing this.

Post more proposals for shorter works that are available online. This makes the proposal more accessible to everyone. The potential downside to this suggestion is that it may be harder to find find non-English texts, especially non-English texts that are also available in an English translation, especially online, unless the content is so old that it is in the public domain.

When you propose a topic challenge, please consider the following:

  • Why is this topic interesting? A short explanation to motivate people to take part in it is helpful. Motivations might include learning about a culture which is represented in, or which produced, that work of literature, or listing different types of interesting questions that might arise about it.
  • What is included? If the challenge is wider than a single book or story - e.g. an author, or a wider set of works such as a genre - please try to include at least a partial list of some works included. Ideally, with links: either to more information about those works, or (if possible and legal) to sites where the works themselves are available to be read.
  • Describe the sort of prior knowledge you think would be helpful to have. Please be mindful of the difficulty some texts pose. If a text would be valuable to study, but has a knowledge and time barrier that makes the book unreasonably difficult to delve into for someone outside of it, it may not be a good fit for a reading challenge.
  • Please remember that the minimum age for the site is 13, and a percentage of our users are young, so please, within reason, attempt to suggest books that are not too graphic, or contain inordinate amounts of strong language. This doesn't mean that the book can't have language, but please keep this in mind.

Currently Ongoing Topic Challenges

Upcoming Topic Challenge

TBD. Please vote on the suggestions below!

Previous Topic Challenges

Older ones (one-month topic challenges) are listed in the older meta post.

Consider following this post in order to be notified of newly-suggested proposals.

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  • 2
    Why a new meta post for this? Because we've rebooted the topic challenges in a slightly different system, not all of the stuff in the old post still applies, the list was getting long, and - perhaps most importantly - votes were stagnating on the old post. The hope is that, with a fresh new start, we can re-attract people's interest to posting and voting on proposals in answers.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Apr 19, 2020 at 12:04

23 Answers 23

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Naim Frashëri

The national poet of Albania, and we have no questions about yet. From Wikipedia:

Frashëri's works explored themes such as freedom, humanity, unity, tolerance and revolution. His twenty two works consist of fifteen works written in Albanian as well as four in Turkish, two in Greek and one in Persian. He is considered to be the most representative writer of Sufi poetry in Albanian, and having been under the influence of his uncle Dalip Frashëri, he tried to mingle Sufism with Western philosophy in his poetical ideals. He had an extraordinarily profound impact on Albanian literature and society during the 20th century, most notably on Asdreni, Gjergj Fishta and Lasgush Poradeci, among many others.

Some of his poems are available in English here and here, for example.

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The works of Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen was a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance movement of the early 20th century. His poetry combined a style inspired by English Romanticism with a willingness to address topics such as racism, religion, and Black heritage. He was praised by contemporaries for bringing Black literary excellence to a wider audience, yet also criticized for sounding too "white" in his use of language.

Cullen's works include the following collections:

  • Color (1925) (available on Project Gutenberg)
  • Copper Sun (1927)
  • The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929)
  • The Medea, and Some Poems (1935)
  • On These I Stand (1947, posthumous)

Many of his poems are now in the public domain and can be found online, for example at Poets.org.

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Rohingya literature

The Rohingya are a stateless people group that experiences severe persecution in Myanmar.

A few examples of literature associated with the Rohingya:

  • First, they erased our names
  • I am a Rohingya
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Chingiz Aitmatov

Chingiz Torekulovich Aitmatov is one of the most famous figures in Kyrgyz literature. He wrote in both Kyrgyz and Russian, and many of his works have been translated into other languages including English.

His most well-known stories include The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years, about which we had an ID question here, and Jamila / Jamilia, a romance set in rural Kyrgyzstan during World War Two. (The French poet Louis Aragon described Jamilia as "the most beautiful love story in the world".) His works are of varying length, some called short stories, some novellas, and some novels.

See also his Goodreads page.

(Posted on 14 October 2020.)

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Arun Kolatkar

Arun Balkrishna Kolatkar (1932–2004) was a bilingual poet writing in English and Marathi. His first collection of English poems, Jejuri (1976), was awarded the Commonwealth Poetry Prize the next year. Several of his other poems, both English and Marathi, appeared in magazines and anthologies from 1955 until his death. Kolatkar is also known to have written some poems in Hindi; a sample is quoted on his Wikipedia page.

Though Kolatkar was widely valorized in Bombay literary circles, he was diffident about publishing collections of his poetry and made his living as a commercial artist. He waited until he was dying of cancer to bring out further volumes. Consequently, the year of his death saw the publication of a flurry of collections in both Marathi and English. One of his Marathi volumes from that year, भिजकी वही bhij_kii vahii (The Damp Notebook), won India's highest literary honor, the Sahitya Akademi Award (Literature Academy Award).

His Marathi poems were collected in the following volumes:

  • अरुण कोलटकरच्या कविता aruN kolaT_kar_chyaa kavitaa (The Poems of Arun Kolatkar, 1977)
  • चिरीमिरी chiriimirii (The Sop, 2004)
  • भिजकी वही bhij_kii vahii (The Damp Notebook, 2004)
  • द्रोण droN (Drona, 2004)

His English collections include:

  • Jejuri (1977)
  • Kala Ghoda Poems (2004)
  • Sarpastra (2004)
  • The Boatride and Other Poems, ed. A K Mehrotra (2009)
  • Collected Poems in English, ed. A K Mehrotra (2010)

Jejuri, a record of the narrator's visit to the eponymous temple town in Maharashtra, is justly celebrated, and poems from the sequence are widely available on allpoetry.com. NYRB Classics reissued Jejuri in 2005 with an introduction by Amit Chaudhuri. Mehrotra's edition of Kolatkar's poems is also easily available on Amazon.com and other fine purveyors of your literary fix.

Kolatkar's Marathi and/or Hindi poems are somewhat harder to come by. Extensive research (i.e., cursory googling) does yield the odd website or two that carries one or more of his poems here and there. Vinay Dharwadkar's translations of a few of Kolatkar's Marathi poems have appeared in TriQuarterly 77, Winter 1989/90, and are freely available online. Kolatkar's own translations of several of his Marathi poems are included in Mehrotra's edition; comparing them Dharwadkar's translations of the corresponding poems is instructive.

Mehrotra's edition also includes Kolatkar's translations of some Marathi bhakti poetry, mainly by the 17th C. poet Tukaram, but including some by the 14th C. Janabai and the 13th C. Namdev. Kolatkar's work as a translator would be within the scope of this topic. Even though Marathi, with over 99 million speakers, is among the top 15 most widely spoken languages in the world, so far we have exactly zero questions about its rich literature on our site. It would be nice to change that.

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The Literature of the Harlem Renaissance

The great efflorescence of African-American culture known as the Harlem Renaissance occurred roughly a century ago. In music, painting, photography, theater, and literature, the artists and writers associated with the movement sought to depict the lived experiences of their community and define a distinct African-American identity. Their poetry, drama, essays, and novels shaped the thinking of the Civil Rights leaders of the 1950s and 1960s.

Representative works of the movement include:

The works of Harlem Renaissance writers make interesting reading for several reasons, including but not limited to:

  • Their intrinsic merit. Poems such as Hughes' "Harlem" pack a punch even to readers unaware of their specific social and political contexts.
  • Their relationship to literary modernism. Writers like T S Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce were reshaping literary conventions at the same time that Harlem Renaissance writers were shaping a new canon. This leads to some rich lines of inquiry, for example around primitivism in the two movements.
  • The way in which writers such as Hughes, Cullen, and McKay navigated their intersectional position as Black and queer.
  • Their attempt to create an identity that was specifically African-American, connected both to Pan-African movements and to America as distinct from Europe.
  • The insights they might provide into the current, fraught historical moment in the US.

These works are also readily accessible. As the links above demonstrate, writings from the period are out of copyright by now and easy to find online. For those who prefer physical copies, David Levering Lewis's anthology The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader (New York: Viking, 1994) includes a good selection. At least in the US, it is inexpensive and readily available in public libraries.

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The Works of Mariama Bâ

Mariama Bâ (1929–1981) was a Senegalese author and feminist. She published two novels in French.

  • Une si longue lettre (1979; translated as So Long a Letter) is a semi-autobiographical epistolary work in which she expressed her frustration with the fate of African women. Bâ received the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa for this work.
  • Un Chant écarlate (1981; translated as Scarlet Song), published shortly before her death, is about a marriage between a Senegalese man and a French woman that fails due to man's egoism and cultural differences.

Articles and other non-ficion were collected in La fonction politique des littératures africaines écrites, Écriture africaine dans le monde (1981).

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Native American and Canadian oral traditions

The treatment of native Canadians has been in the news quite a bit lately. I would like to propose the oral traditions, myths, and literature of native Americans and Canadians.

A few examples of books I was able to find on Amazon:

  • Native American Folklore & Traditions by Elsie Clews Parson
  • Lakota Sioux Legends and Myths: Native American Oral Traditions Recorded by Marie L. McLaughlin and Zitkala-Sa by Marie L. McLaughlin and Zitkala-Sa
  • Indigenous Poetics in Canada
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Literary Hoaxes

Every few years, the literary world becomes aware of a new hoax perpetrated on it. The persona of JT LeRoy and the fake memoir of James Frey are two relatively recent examples. Examples of literary hoaxes go back at least as far as the 5th century BCE, when Onomacritus inserted forgeries of his own devising into his edition of Musaeus's oracles.

Literary hoaxes sometimes retain influence even after the hoax is exposed, whether by the perpetrator or somebody else. Thomas Chatterton, for example, became a figure of great interest among the Romantics because of his tragic life and the role his faked 15th C. Rowley poems played in it. Sadly, another hugely influential hoax, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, continues to circulate as part of the propaganda of anti-semitic, right-wing conspiracy theory groups.

The category of "literary hoax" raises interesting questions about truth in a creative context. Frey's so-called memoir, A Million Little Pieces, would still be a well-written and moving work if considered as fiction rather than memoir. Yet its being marketed as the latter, and the scandal that ensued when its fictitious nature was revealed, demonstrate that part of the value attributed to the world rested on a truth-claim that would be inoperative if it had been marketed as fiction. What does this tell us about the truth-value of a literary memoir as opposed to that of a work of fiction?

As a thought experiment, what would happen if we were to take a reader who was unaware of the scandal surrounding A Million Little Pieces and had her read the work as fiction? How would her response and evaluation change, compared to that of a similar reader (one similarly unaware of the scandal) who read it as memoir? By definition, creative writers indulge in world-building. What are the ways in which the presentation of the built world as fiction or as memoir determine how the reader responds to and evaluates the work?

The same holds true for poetry. If the Rowley poems are good poems, does that depend on their "really" being 15th C. poems? Evidently not, since the Romantics found them well worth reading anyway, and they continue to be anthologized in reputable collections.

There also seems to be a distinction in the reception of a literary hoax depending on whether it's exposed by a third party or by the hoaxer. Frey and Chatterton attracted opprobrium. But Rabindranath Tagore, as a very young man, passed off a pastiche of poems in the 15th C. – 17th C. Vaishnava Padavali tradition as the real article. After the sequence had been published and praised, he admitted that Bhanusingher Padavali was his own creation rather than a rediscovered older manuscript. He suffered no enduring blowback.

The category of literary hoax forces us to ask what the boundary is between creative writing and deception. This is an ancient question, going back all the way to Plato, who flat-out denied that there was any distinction. A topic challenge about literary hoaxes would provide Lit SE the chance to indulge in both theoretical questions about the nature of fiction, and discussions of specific instances of literary hoaxes.

(Posted on 26 November 2020.)

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Native Australian stories and traditions

Historically experienced significant discrimination.

An example of a book is The Speaking Land: Myth and Story in Aboriginal Australia by Ronald and Catherine Berndt.

(Posted on 23 May 2022.)

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Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Rāšid ibn Ḥammād

While he is only for a single series of accounts from a single travel, these writings of an early Islamic traveller have influenced western cultural perception of the area he traveled in a way that would be nigh unimaginable:

He described the Volga Bulgars and the Rus People, and many of the things he wrote about the Rus have been wholesale adopted as what many people think of as Viking today. In fact, in some areas, he is seen as one of the most neutral sources about old norse culture, as contemporary Christian texts about norse people in Viking depict those as raider, bloodthirsty monsters and irredeemable heathens.

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Spanish Civil War literature

The Spanish Civil War was a bloody conflict that raged from 1936 - 1939, and indeed continues to divide the country even to this day.

The horror, however, gave rise to a rich outpouring of art and literature. Classic examples include Hemingway's account of the struggle, For Whom the Bells Tolls, Koestler's reminiscence of being imprisoned on death-row in Sevilla, Dialogue with Death (which informed his later work Darkness at Noon), Laurie Lee's As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, and of course Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. Classic works by Spanish authors include The Family of Pascual Duarte by the Noel prizewinner Camilo José Cela, and The Forging of a Rebel by Arturo Barea.

As well as these older works - which have the advantage of being easily available from the Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg - the war has continued to inspire literature (see, for example, this Goodreads link). Contemporary Spanish works include the bestselling The Time in Between by María Dueñas, Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas, and "the Spanish Dr Zhivago", The Frozen Heart by Almudena Grandes.

As the historian Paul Preston remarked:

It was like this Pandora’s box that had everything. You have got Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky, Mussolini, Franco, Baldwin, Chamberlain, Leon Blum, fascism, communism, socialism, anarchism and liberalism – you name it, it was all there.

Despite all this richness, I only count six questions concerning it. I think it would be definitely worth raising it as a Topic Challenge.

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  • Could you suggest some Spanish works about the Spanish Civil War? Surely, there must be some notable works?
    – Tsundoku
    Commented Jun 23 at 17:51
  • @Tsundoku I can think of Luna roja by Concha Espina, Bestias y farsantes by Joaquín Pérez Madrigal, or for something more popular The Time in Between by María Dueñas. Actually I wonder if Concha Espina might be a good challenge in her own right.
    – Clara Díaz Sanchez
    Commented Jun 23 at 21:57
  • and not forgetting The Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo José Cela.
    – Clara Díaz Sanchez
    Commented Jun 23 at 22:46
  • The Time in Between by María Dueñas and The Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo José Cela seem worth adding to the description. Joaquín Pérez Madrigal and Concha Espina seem hard to find in translation (and my Spanish was never good enough to easily read novels in the original language).
    – Tsundoku
    Commented Jun 23 at 22:55
  • Oh, and the German Wikipedia article about the Spanish Civil War has a section that lists relevant works of literature.
    – Tsundoku
    Commented Jun 23 at 23:09
  • Isabel Allende's book Largo pétalo de mar (translated into English as A Long Petal of the Sea) starts with a long section whose setting is the Spanish Civil War. (And out of the Isabel Allende books I've read, it's one my favorites.)
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Oct 1 at 18:31
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The Epic of Koroghlu

We haven't had a mythical topic challenge for a while, so here's my proposal for what could be described as the national epic of the Turkic peoples. From Wikipedia:

The Epic of Koroghlu is a heroic legend prominent in the oral traditions of the Turkic peoples [...] It was often put to music and played at sporting events as an inspiration to the competing athletes. Koroghlu is the main hero of an epic with the same name in Azerbaijani, Turkmen and Turkish as well as some other Turkic languages. The epic tells about the life and heroic deeds of Koroghlu as a hero of the people who struggled against unjust rulers. The epic combines the occasional romance with Robin Hood-like chivalry. [...] spread widely in these geographical regions leading to emergence of its Turkmen, Kazakh, Uzbek, Tajik, Azerbaijani, Turkish, Crimean Tatar, Georgian, Kurdish, and Armenian versions. The story has been told for many generations by the "bagshy" narrators of Turkmenistan, fighter Ashik bards of Azerbaijan and Turkey, and has been written down mostly in the 18th century.

This sounds really fascinating: one can read the story itself, commentaries on it, and meta information about its history and spread. It would be interesting to see Q&A about its and how it's spread to different languages and cultures, as well as about the content of the epic itself. A quick glance at Google Scholar shows that (unsurprisingly) there have been many academic studies of this work.

From here, on translations:

Karl Reichl (University of Bonn, Germany) notes that: 1) There is no recent English translation to his knowledge; however, there are sections on this epic cycle in chapters 6 and 10 of his Turkic Oral Epic Poetry of 1992 (reprinted hb. and pb. Routledge, 2018). Chodzko’s translation, still giving a good idea of the epic cycle, is downloadable from the Internet Archive; 2) Monire Akbarpouran recently translated some episodes of an Azerbaijanian version of Köroghlu into French, in Koroğlu du XXIe siècle et les aşıq iraniens (Istanbul: es Éditions Isis, 2021); 3) there is a German translation by Karl Reichl of a branch of the Uzbek Köroghlu/Goroghli cycle, Rawšan. Ein usbekisches mündliches Epos (Asiatische Forschungen, 93. Wies­baden, 1985) [from January 2022 communication].

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Stefan Żeromski

A Polish writer of short stories, novels, and plays, nominated 14 times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, who died almost a century ago.

Some works available online:

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The works of Tayeb Salih

Tayeb Salih (1929–2009) is "arguably the most notable Sudanese writer of the 20th century" (Wikipedia article about Sudanese literature). His best-known work is the novel Season of Migration to the North (1966), a post-colonial coming-of-age story about "a student returning to Sudan from England and his recollection of this liberating period in his life". The literary magazine Banipal included it in its list of the 100 Best Arabic Novels.

Tayeb Salih is also known the novella The Wedding of Zein (1966), which is a classic of Arabic literature and was republished in the Heinemann African Writers Series in 1968. The story is set in the same fictional village as the novel Season of Migration to the North.

Available translations in English:

  • Season of Migration to the North. Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies; introduction by Laila Lalami. New York Review Books, 2009. ISBN 9781590173022.
  • The Wedding of Zein. Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies; introduction by Hisham Matar. New York Review Books, 2010. ISBN 9781590173428.

Denys Johnson-Davies's translation of Bandarshah (Kegan Paul, 1996) appears to be out of print. (It is currently not in Routledge's catalogue.)

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Osama Alomar

Osama Alomar is a Syrian author living in the United States, who primarily writes "very short stories", a style that's perhaps more common in Arabic than in English. Many of his stories have been translated into English, usually by himself and C. J. Collins, who worked with him to translate as Alomar worked as a taxi driver.

The stories are usually only a few lines long, and quite surreal, but thought-provoking and may offer a new perspective on something. They also often have a cultural aspect or relate to Alomar's personal history, even in the few short lines of most of his works.

A number of his works can be found online (such as through JSTOR for those with access or other places) or can be purchased.

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Sequels to or retellings of Robinson Crusoe

Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe (1719) has often been adapted into children's books and films. It has also inspired sequels and retellings that sometimes put the original story into a new perspective.

These sequels and retellings include the following:

  • Daniel Defoe's lesser-known lesser-known sequel The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719).
  • Defoe's Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With his Vision of the Angelick World (1720), which "consists of a series of essays written in the voice of the character Robinson Crusoe" (Wikipedia).
  • The poems "Images à Crusoé" by Saint-John Perse (1909).
  • Derek Walcott's poem "The Castaway" (1965).
  • Michel Tournier's retelling Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique (Friday, or, The Other Island, 1967), which was awarded the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française. The themes explored in this novel include civilization versus nature, and the psychology of solitude.
  • Michel Tournier's adaptation of his 1967 novel for younger readers: Vendredi ou la Vie sauvage (1971).
  • Elizabeth Bishop's poem "Crusoe in England".
  • Derek Walcott's play Pantomime (1978).
  • J. M. Coetzee's novel Foe (1986), which is told from the perspective of a woman who landed on the same island as "Cruso" and which focuses on themes of language and power.
  • Patrick Chamoiseau's 2012 novel L'empreinte à Crusoé, which begins after Crusoe has already spent twenty years on the island.

This challenge would allow us to look at the Robinson Crusoe story from various points of view, including an post-colonialist angle, and to compare themes across works based on the same story.

The challenge would not include other examples of the robinsonade genre, such as The Swiss Family Robinson, or shipwreck stories generally.

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The works of Anna Seghers (1900–1983)

The career of the German author Anna Seghers spanned 50 years. Her early works are typically considered examples of Neue Sachlichkeit / New Objectivity. In the 1930s she went into exile; as a Jew and a member of the Communist Party, her life wasn't safe in the Third Reich. During her time in exile, she did not only do important organisational work but also wrote important examples of Exilliteratur, especially the novels The Seventh Cross and Transit. After World War II, she returned to German and eventually settled in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The works she published during this part of her life are typically associated with socialist realism.

Her works include the following.

  • Aufstand der Fischer von St. Barbara – Revolt of the Fishermen of Santa Barbara (1928): Segher's debut novel, for which she was awarded the Kleist prize.
  • Der Weg durch den Februar (1935), a novel inspired by the now almost forgotten February Uprising in Austria in 1934, which was put down by forces of the authoritarian right-wing government of Engelbert Dollfuss. The novel was republished in July/August 2024.
  • Das siebte Kreuz – The Seventh Cross (1939) is a well-known example of Exillteratur but the first complete English translation was published as recently as 2018.
  • Transit (1944): Nobel Prize laureate Heinrich Böll considered this Seghers's most beautiful novel.

(03/08/2024)

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The works of Bessie Head

Bessie Head (1937–1986) was born and raised in South Africa but moved to Botswana (then still the Bechuanaland Protectorate) in 1964, where she published her novels and short stories. As a consequence, she is now usually considered Botswana's most influential writer.

While living in South Africa, she worked as a teacher and participated in anti-apartheid activism. Her first three published novels, When Rain Clouds Gather (1968), Maru (1971) and A Question of Power (1973) are strongly autobiographical. The first one was included in The Big Jubilee Read in the UK, "celebrating 70 great books from across the Commonwealth".

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The works of Unity Dow

Unity Dow (born 1959) was the first woman to be appointed as a judge to Botswana's High Court. In 2000, she began publishing fiction. According to Wikipedia,

Each of Dow's works examines social practices which lead to an imbalance of power relationships and fuel violence against women, child sexual abuse, the AIDS crisis, and gender inequality. Her characters use common sense to resist unreasonable custom but remind the reader of the importance of traditional culture.

So far, she has published the following novels:

  • Far and Beyon' (2000; the AIDS epidemic and violence's effects on families);
  • The Screaming of the Innocent (2002; "examines women's empowerment in a country rife with police corruption, ritual murder, institutional secrecy, and societal silence");
  • Juggling Truths (2003; nominee for the Percy FitzPatrick Prize in the young adults category in 2006);
  • The Heavens May Fall (2007; "deals with identities in transition from traditional society to a modern globalised world").
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  • Seems like a really interesting person and set of works! But, are any of her writings available online, or will participating in this topic challenge require buying or physically obtaining some books?
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Sep 25 at 11:31
  • @Randal'Thor This topic challenge will probably require getting books somewhere, just like for many past topic challenges (Kaas/Cheese, Maryse Condé, Isaac Bashevis Singer, ...).
    – Tsundoku
    Commented Sep 25 at 12:05
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The poetry of Saint-John Perse

Saint-John Perse (Alexis Leger, 1887–1975) was born in Guadeloupe. His family moved to France in 1899 but the fauna and flora of the West Indies created a life-long interest in nature in him. His first collection of poems, Éloges (1911) reflected his nostalgia for Guadeloupe.

While in China as a diplomat (1916–1921), he wrote the epic poem Anabase, which T. S. Eliot later translated into English. He didn't publish any other books until his exile in the USA during the Régime de Vichy and the first 12 years after the end of World War II. During those years, he published several other collections: Exil (1945), Vents (1946) and Amers (1957).

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1960 "for the soaring flight and the evocative imagery of his poetry, which in a visionary fashion reflects the conditions of our time". In 1972 Gallimard published his Œuvres complètes in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, which is also a kind of consecration (especially for a living author).

Even though we currently have 242 questions about French literature, only eleven of those are about French poetry.

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The works of Camara Laye

Camara Laye (1928–1980) was a writer from Guinea, which was still the Colony of French Guinea when he was born. His first novel, L'Enfant noir (1953, The African Child) was inspired by his own life and won the Prix Charles Veillon in 1954. Afrolivresque put the book on the first spot in its list of 21 classiques africains que vous devez avoir lus avant vos 21 ans, adding that it is a "true classic" and "one of the foundational texts of African literature in French".

His second book, Le Regard du roi (1954), is an allegorical novel in which a penniless white man goes on a kind of spiritual journey in Africa.

After an interruption of 12 years, Laye publishes Dramouss (A Dream of Africa). It is a kind of sequel to his first novel. The main character returns from France to Africa and has difficulty adapting again to life in Africa. He is also confronted with political violence.

His last work, Le Maître de la parole (1978), is a transcription and translation of the Epic of Sundiata as he had heard it in Maninka from the griot Babou Condé.

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The works of Bouamel Sansal

Bouamel Sansal (born 1949) is an Algerian author who writes in French. He began writing novels at the age of 50. According to Wikipedia, "The assassination of President Mohamed Boudiaf in 1992 and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria inspired him to write about his country." However, since the publication of his essay Poste restante: Alger in 2006, his books have been banned in Algeria.

In 2011, Sansal was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade,

to honor an Algerian author and passionate story-teller who has consistently encouraged intercultural dialogue in a spirited and compassionate manner as well as in an atmosphere of respect and mutual understanding.

The following novels by Sansal have been translated into English:

  • An Unfinished Business / The German Mujahid (French: Le village de l'Allemand ou le journal des frères Schiller, 208). Translated by Frank Wynne. Europa Editions, 2009.
    • Literary prizes: Grand prix RTL-Lire 2008, Grand prix de la francophonie (Académie française), Prix Nessim Habif (Académie royale de langue et de littérature françaises de Belgique).
  • 2084: The End of the World (French: 2084: La fin du monde, 2015). Translated by Alison Anderson. Europa Editions, 2017.
    • Literary prize: Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française.
  • Harraga (French: Harraga, 2005). Translated by Frank Wynne. Bloomsbury, 2014.

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