This document provides summaries of several literary works and their authors: - Ghostwritten by David Mitchell follows nine interconnected stories across different times and places that are united by a theme of human connection. - The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is set in a dystopian future where the U.S. is ruled by a totalitarian Christian theocracy and explores themes of women's subjugation. - Freedom by Jonathan Franzen chronicles an American family and their complex relationships over many years as they relocate from Minnesota to Washington D.C.

2.  is literature with
its setting generally
after World War II.
 It include contemporary
romance. It is a subgenre
of romance novels,
generally with
the setting after World War
II. The largest of the
romance novel subgenres,
contemporary romance
novels are set in the time
when they were written,
and usually reflect the
mores of their time.

3.  Literature of the 20th century refers to world literature
produced during the 20th century. The range of years
is written from 1900 through the 1990s.
 Technological advances during the 20th century
allowed cheaper production of books, resulting in a
significant rise in production of popular literature
and trivial literature, comparable to the development
in music.
 Towards the end of the 20th century, electronic
literature developed as a genre due to the development
of hypertext and later the world wide web.

4.  Born:
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2 August 1942 (age 71)
Lima, Peru
Occupation: Author,
journalist
Language: Spanish
Nationality: ChileanAmerican
Notable award(s):
National Prize for
Literature

5. The House of the
Spirits
•is the debut novel by Isabel Allende.
•The book was first conceived by Isabel
Allende when she received news that her one
hundred year-old grandfather was dying, and
she began to write him a letter that ultimately
became the starting manuscript of The House
of the Spirits.
•The story details the life of the Trueba family,
spanning four generations, and tracing the
post-colonial social and political upheavals of
Chile. The story is told mainly from the
perspective of two protagonists (Esteban and
Alba) and incorporates elements of magical
realism.

6.  Born: November 18, 1939
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
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Occupation: Novelist,
poet
Nationality: Canadian
Genres: historical
fiction, speculative fiction,
science fiction, dystopian
fiction
Notable work(s): The
Handmaid's Tale, Cat's
Eye,Alias Grace, The Blind
Assassin,Oryx and
Crake, Surfacing

7. The Handmaid's
Tale
is set in the near future, in
a totalitarian Christian the
ocracy which has
overthrown the United
States government, The
Handmaid's Tale explores
themes of women in
subjugation and the
various means by which
they gain agency.

8.  Born:





August 17, 1959 (age 54)
Western Springs, Illinois
Occupation: Novelist, essayist
Nationality: American
Genres: Literary
fictionLiterary
movementSocial realism
Notable work(s): The
Corrections (2001),Freedom (20
10
Notable award(s): National
Book Award
2001
James Tait Black Memorial
Prize
2002

9. Freedom follows several members of an
American family, the Berglund's, as well as
their close friends and lovers, as complex and
troubled relationships unfold over many years.
They have one daughter, Jessica, and a son,
Joey, who early on displays an independent
streak and an interest in making money. Joey
becomes sexually involved with a
neighborhood teen named Connie and begins
to rebel against his mother, going so far as to
move in with Connie, her mother, and her
mother's boyfriend Blake, making Patty and
Walter increasingly unstable. After several
unhappy years the family relocates to
Washington, D.C., abandoning the
neighborhood and house they worked so hard
to improve. Walter takes a job with an
unorthodox environmental project, tied to big
coal.

10.  Born:
21 June 1948 (age 65)
Aldershot, England
 Occupation:
Novelist,
screenwriter
Nationality:
English

11.  “First Love, Last Rites” is told by an unnamed narrator who
lives with his girlfriend in a quayside apartment in
England. Both are seventeen or eighteen years of age. It is
early summer, and the lovers, filled with youthful passion,
make love regularly on a mattress-covered table in front of
a big, open window. Once, while they are lying on the table,
the narrator becomes aware of clawing sounds behind the
wall; shortly afterward, Sissel also hears the noise.
 The narrator and Sissel continue to lie on the mattresscovered table, talking and making love. Sissel develops foot
rot, the smell mingling with the smells of mud and seaweed
coming in through the window. The narrator hears the
creature in the wall and imagines it is his own creature in
Sissel’s body—one of feathers, claws, and gills. Sissel
hears the creature also, and her lover thinks the scratching
sound that grows out of their lovemaking is part of her
fantasy also.
 By mid-July, the lovers touch less, no longer enjoying their
room. Adrian comes to visit them every day and wants to
fight with Sissel as in former days. He is sincerely
disgusted when the lovers touch.

12.  Born: 12 January 1969 (age 44)
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Southport, England, United
Kingdom
Occupation: Novelist
Nationality: BritishAlma
materUniversity of Kent
Notable work(s): Ghostwritten
number9dream,Cloud
Atlas, Black Swan Green, The
Thousand Autumns of Jacob de
Zoet
Notable award(s): John
Llewellyn Rhys Prize
1999 Ghostwritten

13.  A gallery attendant at the Hermitage. A young jazz buff in Tokyo. A
crooked British lawyer in Hong Kong. A disc jockey in Manhattan. A
physicist in Ireland. An elderly woman running a tea shack in rural China.
A cult-controlled terrorist in Okinawa. A musician in London. A
transmigrating spirit in Mongolia. What is the common thread of
coincidence or destiny that connects the lives of these nine souls in nine
far-flung countries, stretching across the globe from east to west? What
pattern do their linked fates form through time and space?
A writer of pyrotechnic virtuosity and profound compassion, a mind to
which nothing human is alien, David Mitchell spins genres, cultures, and
ideas like gossamer threads around and through these nine linked stories.
Many forces bind these lives, but at root all involve the same universal
longing for connection and transcendence, an axis of commonality that
leads in two directions--to creation and to destruction. In the end, as lives
converge with a fearful symmetry, Ghostwritten comes full circle, to a point
at which a familiar idea--that whether the planet is vast or small is merely a
matter of perspective--strikes home with the force of a new revelation. It
marks the debut of a writer of astonishing gifts.

14.  Born: 26 July 1856
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Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November 1950 (aged 94)
Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire,
England
Occupation: Playwright, critic,
political activist
Nationality: Irish
Genres: Satire, black comedy
Literary movement: Ibsenism,
naturalism
Notable award(s): Nobel Prize in
Literature
1925
Academy Award for Writing
Adapted Screenplay
1938 Pygmalion

15. Shaw was conscious of the
difficulties involved in staging a
complete representation of the play.
Acknowledging in a "note for
technicians" that such a thing would
only be possible "on the cinema
screen or on stages furnished with
exceptionally elaborate machinery",
he marked some scenes as
candidates for omission if necessary.
Of these, a short scene at the end of
Act One in which Eliza goes home,
and a scene in Act Two in which
Eliza is unwilling to undress for her
bath. The others are the scene at the
Embassy Ball in Act Three and the
scene with Eliza and Freddy in Act
Four.