Suggest your Lit.SE reading challenges here! [duplicate]

Question

A few days ago, I asked about starting up reading challenges, with a particular goal in mind. Many of our questions are about the same authors, the same stories, the same genres, the same cultures. This isn't anyone's fault - it's just the way we were raised to read. We tend to pick out books that are "literary" or widely-recognized within our own cultures and our own personal reading scopes. But in reality, this restriction is harshly limiting on cultural and literary exposure.

You can read more about the reasoning behind topic challenges at that meta post. Here's what it boils down to: as first steps toward alleviating the breadth problem of Literature.SE, we're going to start reading challenges, similar to topic challenges on other sites (e.g. Pets, Gardening, Worldbuilding, and Sustainable Living).

Our reading challenges are typically going to last one month, unless a particular suggestion specifies otherwise, which they're certainly free to do. While this is much longer than other Stack sites typically do, this should allow us to read and approach a topic at a casual pace, while not too harshly limiting the number of topics we'll get to explore.

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Guidelines for Voting On a Reading 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.

Guidelines for Suggesting a Reading Challenge

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. (It's also worth bearing in mind that these challenges are less a tool of study, and more a tool of intersectional exposure.)

In practice we expect to see mostly three categories: specific books, authors, and genres. The following aren't hard and fast rules, but are worth considering.

• When you create a book challenge, please consider doing the following:
  • Ensure that the book(s) is/are reasonably available. Books from other cultures are a priori harder to obtain in English-speaking countries, so there's a good bit of slack here. But make sure that it's still possible to obtain a copy of it at all.
  • Books are usually translated by native speakers of the target language in order to ensure that the translation is idiomatically correct, uses the correct nuances of the target language, etc. In some cases, it may be advantageous that the translator of the book is from the country of origin of that book; this can help preserve the meaning of a translated text, but isn't a requirement.
  • Describe the sort of prior knowledge you think would be helpful have before/during reading the book.
  • 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.
• When you create an author challenge, please consider doing the following:
  • Briefly describe what about the author motivated you to suggest them here. This doesn't have to be long, but it's helpful to have some more context so that people get a better sense for why you'd suggest it here.
  • List around 2-4 of the books by the author that you think are particularly important or relevant, and maybe if it's not immediately clear, how they tie into your motivation for the author.
  • If an author doesn't have very many published books, their works may be more suited for a book challenge.
• When you create a genre challenge, please consider doing the following:
  • Highlight a reasonable number (3-5ish) of recommended authors who have written works in that genre.
  • Highlight one or two of each author's books, as per the above advice. This might seem like a lot of work, but your answer is going to serve as a starting point for people to discover what they want to read in this genre.

Additionally, if you think your topic challenge is suited for a time period different than one month, you're welcome to indicate this in your answer. One month is sort of the assumed default; one week challenges might be an easier sell, longer than one month might make it a fairly hard sell. It's all up to you, though.

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Some time after the previous topic challenge ends, someone in the community, anyone, can make the next one. The new topic challenge should be asked in its own question. If the answer offers useful information about that topic, that content should be copied over, too.

We'll also keep a running list of topic challenges here:

• April 2017: a book challenge, Hard to Be a God, suggested by Gallifreyan.

• May 2017: a topic challenge, Icelandic Sagas, suggested by Rand al'Thor.

• June 2017: a short story anthology, The SEA is Ours, suggested by BESW.

• July 2017: a book challenge, I Am a Cat, suggested by Torisuda.

• August 2017: a book challenge, Sophie's World, suggested by Mithrandir.

• September 2017: a book challenge, Persepolis, suggested by Torisuda.

• October 2017: a book challenge, A Grain of Wheat, suggested by Hamlet.

• November 2017: a book challenge, Tower of Secrets, suggested by BESW.

• February 2018: a poetry challenge, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, suggested by Rand al'Thor.

• March 2018: an author challenge, Michael Ende, suggested by Rand al'Thor.

• April 2018: a book challenge, Look Who's Back, suggested by fi12.

• May 2018: an author challenge, Ursula K. Le Guin, suggested by Rand al'Thor.

• June 2018: a book challenge, Their Eyes Were Watching God, suggested by user111.

• July 2018: a book challenge, The Assault / De aanslag, by Harry Mulisch, suggested by suggested by Martin Tournoij..

• August 2018: an author challenge, Nalo Hopkinson, suggested by user111.

• September 2018: an author challenge, Elif Şafak, suggested by Rand al'Thor.

• October 2018: an author challenge: Robert Hayden's poetry suggested by BESW.

• November 2018: a book challenge: the Kalevala, suggested by heather.

• December 2018: an author challenge: Darcie Little Badger, suggested by Mithrandir.

• January 2019: an author challenge: Lu Xun, suggested by Christophe Strobbe.

• February 2019: an author challenge: Miroslav Krleža, suggested by Rand al'Thor.

• March 2019: a book challenge: Release the Sun, suggested by BESW.

• April 2019: an author challenge, Jean Rhys, suggested by Christophe Strobbe.

• May 2019: a book challenge, My Uncle Napoleon, suggested by BESW.

• June 2019: a topic challenge, Elizabethan prose, suggested by Christophe Strobbe.

• July 2019: a book challenge, Journey to the West or 西游记, suggested by Christophe Strobbe.

(answers below for used topic challenges have been deleted, you'll need 2k rep to view them)

Answer 1

Emily Dickinson

Yes, Emily Dickinson is a well-known poet. However, the emily-dickinson tag only has two questions. This is both surprising--I thought she was popular as well as well-known--and something that should be rectified--her poems are definitely worthy of more attention on this site. And I've noticed that the poetry tag tends to be dominated by male poets--this would add some diversity to that tag.

Her poems are also short, which would make it more likely that people could commit to reading them and asking questions about them.

Answer 2

Pavane by Keith Roberts (1968)

This is an alternate history science fiction novel, although it contains hardly any SF elements. It is set in England and the basic premise is that Elizabeth I was assassinated before she could establish her rule. The Spanish invaded and the Reformation was suppressed throughout Europe. The use of electricity has been outlawed by the Pope, and so technology is basically that of Victorian England.

This is not a steam-punk novel. Rather, it is a collection of loosely interconnected stories that only come together at the end of the book, and describes the struggles of various characters as they cope with the strange version of England that they find themselves in.

At about 200 pages, it is an easy read, and it can be picked up on Amazon Marketplace relatively cheaply. Note that one chapter, The White Boat, is not included in all editions, and it is not clear (at least on Amazon) which editions include it (my copy doesn't). There are some good reviews on Amazon.

Wikipedia: Pavane (novel)

Answer 3

Author challenge: August Wilson

With the exception of William Shakespeare (currently the most popular author on the site, followed closely by Ayn Rand), theater seems relatively underrepresented here. A random sampling of a few well-known playwrights:

• Eugene O'Neill (0 questions)
• Arthur Miller (2 questions)
• Tennessee Williams (0 questions)
• Samuel Beckett (2 questions)

August Wilson and Lorraine Hansberry both have cultural significance and would contribute to site diversity. While these authors are obviously fairly well-known, I think that doing a challenge on one of them would be good for the site.

I would like to suggest August Wilson (1945 – 2005) in particular for an upcoming challenge. He received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and a number of other awards.

Answer 4

Author challenge: Munshi Premchand (Dhanpat Rai Shrivastava)

Since this site needs more questions about non-Western literature, I'm submitting a proposal for one of the most important 20th-century authors from India. Munshi Premchand (1880 – 1936) is not well known in the West, even though he "is regarded as one of the foremost Hindi writers of the early twentieth century" (Wikipedia). He published novels, short stories and plays; not all of them have been translated into English.

• His first major novel, Bazaar-e-Husn, (1924) was translated into English as Sevasadan (Oxford University Press, 2005).
• Nirmala (1927) was translated into English in 2001 (Oxford University Press).
• Gaban (1931) was translated as Gaban: The Stolen Jewels (Oxford University Press, 2002).
• The novel Karmabhoomi (1932) was translated as Karmabhumi (Oxford University Press, 2008).
• The novel Godaan (1936) was translated into English as The Gift of a Cow, into French as Godan: Le don d'une vache (L'Hermattan, 2006) and into German as Godan oder die Opfergabe (Manesse, 1979, where the author is identified as Premacanda).
• Penguin Books India published The Complete Short Stories in four volumes in 2017 (but none of his other works).
• For a selection of short stories, see The Illustrated Premchand: Selected Short Stories (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Some of these translations were published on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Premchand's birth or shortly thereafter. There are also a few German translations.

A monograph by Madan Gopal, published in 1944, is now available on Archive.org.

Answer 5

Author challenge: Rabindranath Tagore

I would like to suggest Rabindranath Tagore (1861—1941), a Bengali writer who wrote poems, short stories, and novels.

This is in part a response to the suggestion of Munshi Premchand (1880—1936), a Hindi writer whose works seem quite difficult to get in English. I expect that choosing Premchand for a challenge would fail for the same reason that many of the recent challenges have: the author is too obscure and people will not be able to find his books.

Tagore is an Indian writer from roughly the same period. However, his work appears to be much more available in English: many of his poems can be found on the internet, and Stories from Tagore is available from Project Gutenberg. His novels have also been translated, although I don't know whether they are available online.

Answer 6

The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed

I'm quite certain this book is unlike anything else that's been asked about on our site so far: it was written by a computer. That simple fact throws out a lot of the possible ways to approach questions here - the concept of authorial intent, in particular, becomes essentially irrelevant - while also introducing some fascinating new approaches: knowledge of other topics, such as computer science and artificial intelligence, might be as important as literature expertise for answering these questions.

It's also a perfect delight to read, at least for anyone who appreciates the weird and wacky. Consider the following excerpts from the text, and try to keep a straight face while reading them:

RICHARD. A week is obscurely like a night.
BUCKINGHAM. My Lord, chicken is like lamb.
RICHARD. Yet weeks can be killed as can chicken.
BUCKINGHAM. Tis true, my Liege, yet ambiguities adorn our pain as ambiguities broaden our issues.

There once was a furry brown noun
Had window shades which could not pound
They excreted and boggled
But still always goggled
But please sadly call them a crown

Tomatoes from England and lettuce from Canada are eaten by cosmologists from Russia. I dream implacably about this concept. Nevertheless tomatoes or lettuce inevitably can come leisurely from my home, not merely from England or Canada. My solicitor spoke that to me; I recognized it. My fatherland is France, and I trot coldly while bolting some lobster on the highway to my counsellor. He yodels a dialogue with me about neutrons or about his joy. No agreements here! We sip seltzer and begin a conversation. Intractably our dialogue enrages us. Strangely my attorney thinks and I gulp slowly and croon, "Do you follow me?"

Reading this book will guarantee you a good laugh, and Q&A about it will guarantee our site some new perspectives and ways of analysing a very unusual piece of literature.

Answer 7

Gargantua and Pantagruel

The series of five novels on Gargantua and Pantagruel by the French humanist François Rabelais (between 1483 and 1494 – 9 April 1553) are, as Wikipedia says, "written in an amusing, extravagant, and satirical vein, and [feature] much crudity, scatological humor, and violence". The novels are not to everybody's taste (for example, George Orwell didn't like them), but Laurence Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy, saw himself as Rabelais' successor in humour writing.

Rabelais is irreverent towards narrowmindedness (even though he was a monk, he also criticised the Church in a time when this was still dangerous) and pretentiousness. (Annotated editions from the 1950s still contained some partially censored footnotes.) His work has been the subject of much analysis, such as Bakhtin's study Rabelais and His World.

The series contains the following books (identified by their conventional short titles):

• Pantagruel (circa 1532; English translation of Pantagruel by Thomas Urquhart and Peter Antony Motteux)
• Gargantua (1534; English translation of Gargantua by Thomas Urquhart and Peter Antony Motteux)
• The Third Book of Pantagruel (1546; English translation of The Third Book by Thomas Urquhart and Peter Antony Motteux)
• The Fourth Book of Pantagruel (1552; English translation of The Fourth Book by Thomas Urquhart and Peter Antony Motteux)
• The Fifth Book of Pantagruel (circa 1564; the attribution of this book has been debated; English translation of The Fifth Book by Thomas Urquhart and Peter Antony Motteux)

In the preface to Gargantua, Rabelais wrote:

Mieulx est de ris que de larmes escripre,
Pour ce que rire est le propre de l'homme.

English (Burton Raffel's translation):

I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous.

Answer 8

Author challenge: Nick Joaquin

Nick Joaquin (1917 – 2004) was a Filipino journalist and author whose works include the following:

• A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino (1950), which is regarded as the "national play of the Philippines",
• The Woman Who Had Two Navels (1961), which is considered a classic in Philippine literature, and
• Cave and Shadows (1983), a novel set during Ferdinand Marcos’s martial law in the Philippines.

Answer 9

The Tale of Genji

The Tale of Genji, written in the early 11th century by the noblewoman and lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu, is almost consistently described as the oldest novel in Japanese literature. Depending on how you define "novel" it may be the world's first novel.

There are English translations of the novel by Suematsu Kenchō (1882), Arthur Waley (1921-1933) and Edward Seidensticker (first volume 1976).

The novel has also been adapted to other media, including mangas: The Tale of Genji by Waki Yamato and Genji Monogatari by Miyako Maki.

Answer 10

Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill is a fantastic author. She writes about topics such as sexual assault and gender relationships. It's hard for me to describe her writing, but here's a review: What Men Talk About When They Talk About Mary Gaitskill.

This would be a topic challenge that would involve some difficult topics.

Answer 11

Playing in the Dark by Toni Morrison

This is one of the most insightful pieces of literary criticism that I have ever read. It's very accessible, the ideas are not couched in academic language. The ideas of the piece are simple but powerful. It's brief (three chapters). If I had to make a list of the books that impacted me the most, this book would be in my top ten.

This book is a look at racism in various works of fiction. It looks at the minor characters -- the servants in the background, the savages who appear briefly only to be killed by the white protagonists, the slaves who never speak -- and demonstrates that these characters are in fact central to the story.

Answer 12

Topic challenge: Nazi Holocaust literature

This includes both fiction and nonfiction books - examples include

• Night by Elie Weisel
• Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• Maus by Art Spiegelman (based on interviews with author's father, graphic novel)
• Children's poems from Terezin Concentration Camp
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (fiction)
• Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (fiction/children's literature)

Answer 13

Maltese literature

The Maltese language is unique in the world. With only around half a million speakers worldwide, it's the only Semitic language which is an official language of a European/EU country, and the only Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet. It's similar to Arabic, but evolved independently and heavily influenced by Italian. One topic we might explore is whether the uniqueness of the language has affected its literature (e.g. do metrical feet in poetry work like those in Arabic or in Italian, or even in English?)

Due to the bilinguality of most inhabitants of Malta, there's not a long history of Maltese literature. The body of literature in this language is remarkably small and recent, especially for a European language. For this reason I'm not suggesting a particular Maltese-language work or author for the topic challenge, but rather the whole collective. Examples of Maltese literature freely available online:

• The oldest known Maltese text is Il-Kantilena, a 15th-century rhyming poem rediscovered in the 1960s.
• Two books of Maltese poetry with English translations are freely available from their author.
• I found a site which recommends some texts both of and about Maltese literature.

This is a very niche topic, so let's help to promote it!

Answer 14

The works of Theodor Fontane

On the occasion of the bicentenary of the birth of Theodor Fontane (1819 - 1898) I would like to propose the works of this novelist and poet for a reading challenge. Fontane is known as a representative of realism and is known for novels such as Effi Briest, Frau Jenny Treibel and Der Stechlin. His works are now in the public domain; see Theodor Fontane on Wikisource and Archive.org.

Below are a few English translations that are either in the public domain or publicly available for other reasons:

• Effi Briest, Fontane's best-known novel, translated by William A. Cooper during the 1890s.
• The Bridge by the Tay (poem, from the anthology A Harvest of German Verse, 1916).
• The Tragedy of Afghanistan (poem).

Answer 15

The Works of Gottfried Keller

On the occasion of the bicentenary of the birth of Gottfried Keller (1819 - 1890), I would like to propose the works of this Swiss novelist and poet for a reading challenge. Like Fontane, Keller is known as a representative of realism. He is best remembered as an author for novels, novellas and short stories, for example:

• Der grüne Heinrich (1855, revised 1879; English translation, Green Henry by A. M. Holt, 1960): important example of a Bildungsroman;
• Sieben Legenden (English translation, Legends of Long Ago by Charles Hart Handschin, 1911; also available as Seven Legends);
• Die Leute von Seldwyla (English translation: Seldwyla Folks): a collection of novellas which includes "Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe" (turned into an opera by the British composer Frederick Delius: A Village Romeo and Juliet);
• Martin Salander (1886), his last novel.

The Gottfried Keller Foundation in Switzerland was established in 1890. See also Review: The Fanciful Novellas of Gottfried Keller.

Answer 16

The works of Arthur Koestler (1905 – 1983)

Arthur Koestler was a Hungarian-British author and journalist. He was born in Budapest and grew up mainly in Austria. He became a member of the Communist Party of Germany in 1931, from which he resigned in 1938 because he had become disillusioned by Stalinism. His works include the following:

• The Gladiators (novel, 1939). On the surface, this novel is about the effects of the Spartacus revolt in the Roman Republic, but it focuses on the theme of idealism going wrong.
• Darkness at Noon (novel, 1940): the novel that made him famous. It is set during the Stalinist Great Purge of 1939.
• Arrival and Departure (novel, 1943). In his review, George Orwell thought it contained "one of the most shocking descriptions of Nazi terrorism that have ever been written".
• The Act of Creation (1964)
• The Ghost in the Machine (1967; philosophical psychology)
• The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe (1969)
• Janus: A Summing Up (1978). This book develops the concept of holarchy, which "provides a coherent way of organizing knowledge and nature all together" (Wikipedia).

Answer 17

Magda Szabó

Magda Szabó was a Hungarian author who wrote novels, poetry, essays, short stories, etc. Her works have been translated into many languages, many of them into English. These include:

• The Door (Az ajtó), a 1987 story about the complex relationship between a woman (who may be modelled on the author herself) and her housekeeper;
• The Fawn (Az őz), a 1959 story about an actress and her struggles in post-war Hungary;
• Für Elise (2002) is a more recent adult novel that is well received.
• Abigél (1970) is the most famous youth novel of Szabó Magda. The story takes place during the world war, and concerns a girl who is suddenly sent away from his father to a very strict religious school. Abigél is sometimes used in primary school literature courses. There is a tv film adaptation (1978) with screenplay by the author and an all-star cast of actors. The novel has been translated to many languages, including French, German, Romanian, Czech, Polish, Latvian, Italian, and there's an English translation published in 2020 (translator Lin Rex).
• The Elf Prince Lala (Tündér Lala), a 1964 children's fantasy story about the misfit prince of a fairy kingdom;
• The Lamb and Lawrence the Lamb (Bárány and Bárány Boldizsár), two collections of poetry published in 1947 and 1958.

More details about some of her books can be found here.

Answer 18

They Thought They Were Free: the Germans, 1933-45, by Milton Mayer

I realize our topic challenges haven't been much for nonfiction, but it does still fall under "literature," and this book is a fascinating slice of history.

It offers insight into how ideology and dogma can take root in people and cause them to voluntarily injure their own political freedom - without even necessarily realizing that it's happening. It's a study of human nature in the context of caustic political environments. And it's about quite a lot more than this, too, but it's difficult to summarize.

The prerequisites for reading this really aren't much more than a general, close-to-passing familiarity with the events of World War II. The social and political climate are explored within this book. It's relatively accessible, even if a somewhat chilling read.

There's really only one accessibility downside: new copies are relatively expensive (though used copies are still $6-7 in the US).

Answer 19

A genre challenge : the Autobiography !

Because it is so interesting to dive into someone's own story by himself.

I think the incipit of the Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau well depict why this can be an interesting challenge :

I have entered upon a performance which is without example, whose acomplishment will have no imitator. I mean to present my fellow-mortals with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this man shall be myself. incipit of Confessions

How committed one may be to telling the truth about himself and how much he lies sometimes and hides from shame by preventing exposing him show himself too much ? Just by its title sometimes it commits the author to the truth, Confessions of Saint Augustine and Rousseau for instance, I Pierre Rivière ... The writer wants to tell us everything, he wants to give us his soul. But can we believe him or her ? And does it brings any literary value to write it's own story. It may then be interesting to dive into this theme by echoing the quote of the French writer Michel Leiris :

To expose certain obsessions of a sentimental or sexual nature, to confess publicly some of the deficiencies or cowardice that cause him the most shame, such was for the author the means-gross, no doubt, but that he gives to others in hoping to see him amend - to introduce even the shadow of a bull's horn into a literary work.

in The Autobiographer as Torero, Michel Leiris 1946

This bull's horn is the metaphor that the author chooses and cherishes to ask the question whether it is necessary for the writing to be literary valuable to confront a sanction, social, legal, "if there is nothing, in the fact of writing a work, which is an equivalent of what the bull-horn is to the bullfighter, who alone - because of the material threat it conceals - confers a human reality to his art, prevents him from to be something other than vain ballerina graces?", says he. Let's discuss about it reading autobiographies ! I clustered with the help of this document different books according to different point of views :

Do you believe suspicion of narcissism prevents autobiography from delivering a truth ?

• Confessions, section 1 and 2 by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Confessions are animated by the constant search for a perception of Jean-Jacques by the reader more benevolent than in life.

• Childhood by Nathalie Sarraute.

For those who are concerned that the style tempers the unveiling of oneself. Nathalie Sarraute names in Enfance the "connections" ("You made a nice little connection ... how to resist so much charm?")

Or do you believe that the Autobiography is Strategies at the service of a truth ?

May it be strategies in the service of an anthropological mission such as Aimé Césaire or Victor Hugo ?

• Return to my Native Land, poem by Aimé Césaire.

Where the widening of the lyrical subject to the larger condition of the black man constitutes an enunciative (and political) choice that allows us to go beyond the narcissism evoked by Leiris. The stylistic bias, contrary to what the author of the subject argues, has a strong anthropological value.

• Contemplations, poem by Victor Hugo.

For an example of one that believes that to tell about oneself is, in the same gesture, to tell about humanity. "Is this the life of a man? writes Hugo on the threshold of his Contemplations. Yes and the lives of other men too. My life is yours, your life is mine. When I speak of myself, I speak of you; Ah! fool who thinks I'm not you"

In addition to it, style can also contribute to the emergence of a truth about the world and about oneself.

• Contemplations, poem by Victor Hugo or The Words, book by Jean-Paul Sartre

For instance a signifying structure is set here, identifiable in Hugo's Contemplations ("Formerly" / "Today") and in Sartre's Words ("Reading" / "Writing"), is therefore not necessarily an escape from confession.

Or is the Autobiography still a pure literary invention ?

Leiris's assumption implies an infusion of autobiography into the material of life. Now, it seems, autobiography is not reduced to restoring life, but it is perhaps also to create and invent it or perhaps it is the abandonment to writing that counts, not the writing ?

• Aurelia, poem by Nerval

One may not use tell his life, but composes a story more eloquent than the story of life. Here the poet creates at the frontier between fiction and reality using his dreams when doing drugs.

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction, study by Jean Starobinski

Maybe it is the writing that gives a literary value, not what is told: "The problem of language vanishes from the moment the act of 'writing is no longer seen as an instrumental means used for the purpose of revealing the truth, but as the very unveiling'. Henceforth, stylistic experimentation is no longer a brake, nor a vehicle for the advent of a truth, but a literary project in its own right.

With this three starting points, why not start to read and fight for what we believe the Autobiography is about with this original genre challenge !

Answer 20

Author challenge: Max Brod (1884 - 1968)

Max Brod is best known as friend and biographer of Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924); Kafka ordered Brod to destroy many of this unpublished and unfinished works after his death. Fortunately for us, Brod did not do this. However, Brod was also an author in his own right. Like Kafka, he was a German-speaking Jewish Czech. He published mostly novels and novellas; in addition, he wrote poems and translated a number of opera libretti, especially of operas by Leoš Janáček.

Answer 21

Yale Open Course: Introduction to the Theory of Literature

Course taught by Paul H. Fry at Yale University in the Spring 2009.

The course web site is available here. It features videos of the lectures as well as transcripts for convenience for copying and pasting into our questions. The audio of the lectures are also available on iTunes.

I think that this would contribute to site diversity. After all, we have yet to have a listening challenge, and we have entirely too little non-fiction on the site.

And besides, literary theory on a literature site is never a bad thing :)

Answer 22

Cheese by Willem Elsschot

Everybody likes cheese, so why not read a novel about it? Cheese (in Dutch: Kaas, 1933) is a novel by the Flemish author Willem Elsschot (1882-1960) in which the main character, Frans Laarmans, a clerk, decides to become a sales agent in cheese. Without spoiling too much, I just want to say that he is out of his depth in this job.

Willem Elsschot wrote several other novels, all of which are relatively short. Cheese is "the most translated Flemish novel ever" (see Flanders Literature, where you can find a sample of the 2002 English translation).

Reviewer Chris Baker wrote,

Cheese is one of the very few comic novels that is able to escape its era and its culture. Though written almost seventy years ago, its situations are as fresh as today's office place.

Answer 23

Author Challenge: Karen Joy Fowler

Karen Joy Fowler is an author who crosses genre boundaries. Some of her work borders on fantasy or horror, but more than falling into the standard genre tropes, Fowler's work often touches on the numinous, the ineffable, the impossible. Whether she does that within genre our without, the result is fantastic.

I think of Fowler as a literary genre writer -- she breathes depth, nuance and insight into fields where you'd hardly expect them. And she's a master of characterizations and detail -- so often, individual paragraphs feel like complete stories in and of themselves, giving you a vivid portrait with just a few well-chosen details.

Notable books include:

• The Jane Austen Book Club: Six friend read Jane Austen together -- each their own character, each with their own interpretation of Austen; and each finds reflections of Austen in their own tumultuous lives.
• We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: A portrait of a dysfunctional family. Excellent, excellent characters, as usual. Hard to say more without spoiling the book (please, please, don't let anybody spoil the book, not even the back cover).
• What I Didn't See And Other Stories: An excellent collection of Fowler's short fiction.
• Sarah Canary: A weird variety-show take on 1873 America, where a Chinese railroad worker finds himself accompanying an apparent madwoman wherever she goes. Mystifying.

One of the things I love about Fowler is that her books are dense and rich; they'll provide so much material for questions and discussion. I think she'd be an excellent selection.

Answer 24

Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

We don't have all that many questions about nonfiction here, so it could be good for site diversity. Plus, literary theory (tag: theory) is always a good thing here.

Answer 25

The Iron Ring, by Lloyd Alexander

Driven by his sense of "dharma," or honor, young King Tamar sets off on a perilous journey, with a significance greater than he can imagine, during which he meets talking animals, villainous and noble kings, demons, and the love of his life.

Alexander's latest epic adventure is rooted in the mythology of ancient India. A losing game of chance with a mysterious stranger seems like a dream to young King Tamar, but the iron ring on his finger is a very real token that his life may be forfeit. A journey to the stranger's distant kingdom seems his only chance to discover the truth. Many adventures and diversions crop up along the way as Tamar gains some surprising companions, including a brave and beautiful milkmaid, a cowardly eagle, and a wiley monkey king who used to be a man. The author's flexible style moves smoothly from comedy to tragedy and back again; from battle scenes to ridiculous situations, Alexander never loses the thread. Set within the action are small gems of poetry and folktales. The concept of dharma, or proper conduct, and the rigid caste system deeply affect Tamar's actions. Plot, characters, and setting all have their parts to play, but it is the tension set up among the lively characters and the cultural conventions binding them that create the structure of the story and lead inevitably to its conclusion. This wise and witty adventure can be enjoyed on many levels.
_Goodreads

I don't think that this is such a well-known book, and I haven't seen any questions about this yet. I think we could get some good questions about it.

Answer 26

Batman: Noёl

This graphic novel is different from (most?) other Batman comics - for one thing, because Batman is not the hero here. Based on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, this story (written and drawn by Lee Bermejo¹, who also did the artwork for Joker) offers an interesting perspective on the crusades of the Dark Knight, and how they change the lives of the ordinary people who might involuntarily get involved on Batman's wrong side.

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With its touching story and stunning visuals, this book will be a valuable contribution to our collection of questions, and it's also convenient for the purposes of the challenge - it's an ~80-page-long one-shot comic, which is available for purchase in multiple venues.

Amazon | Google Books | Apple iBooks | Comixology | Barnes & Noble

The novel has earned very positive reviews both from critics and from readers (me included), mostly praising the art and the non-trivial story.

Goodreads | Batman News | How to Love Comics | IGN

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¹ Coloured by Barbara Ciardo and lettered by Todd Klein.

Answer 27

The Koran

• We don't have all that many questions about religious works, and as far as I recall most of them are about the Bible, the best-known piece of religious literature in the West.
• We also don't have that many arabic-literature questions, despite the rich and illustrious history of Arabic literature - probably a longer continuous history than almost any European language - and the unique aspects of the language which make it hard to do justice to in translation.
• It could be a great way to attract experts of a new kind (some of whom already know the SE system) to our site. Scholars of Islam might come to answer our Koran questions and then stay to answer other questions about Arabic literature or religious literature.
• The text is easily available online in many languages.

Of course it is a 'classic', and probably one of the most-read pieces of literature in the world. But I think it still fits the spirit of the topic challenges, given the lack of interest in it or any similar literature on this site so far. I suspect most of our users have never read any of it and don't know that much about it, so this could provide a great learning opportunity for them.

Answer 28

The Sandman: The Dream Hunters

The Dream Hunters is a standalone novella in The Sandman universe, written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated, exquisitely, by Yoshitaka Amano.

The story, while inspired by Japanese folk tales, is invented y Neil Gaiman. It tell a tale of a monk, and a fox spirit, and sacrifices made for love.

From Neil Gaiman's website:

Featuring striking painted artwork, this love story, set in ancient Japan, tells the story of a humble young monk and a magical, shape-changing fox who find themselves romantically drawn together. As their love blooms, the fox learns of a devilish plot by a group of demons to steal the monk's life. With the aid of Morpheus, the King of All Night's Dreamings, the fox must use all of her cunning and creative thinking to foil this evil scheme and save the man that she loves. This book also boasts an eight page section highlighting Yoshitaka Amano's amazing painted art.

While it's not a foreign story in the strict sense of the word, it's an interesting adaptation of the Japanese folk lore, and the artwork by Yoshitaka Amano makes it look even more authentic.

IGN | Tor.com | Biblio.com | Vertigo | Amazon | Book Depository

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Note that The Dream Hunters has also been adapted to a 4-issue comics by P. Craig Russell, but I'm talking specifically about the novella.