PROSE

There is no better way to learn English than to read. There are many great books 

to read and enjoy. Here is a short list of great works by world renowned writers.

NOVELS & PLAYS FROM AROUND THE WORLD 
(Please suggest other titles for inclusion in the following list.)

At the end of this sectiuon you will find an essay on Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.

Alan Paton: Cry the Beloved  

Cry the Beloved is the tragic story of two sons who die in their youth and whose fathers come together, quite by accident, to help console each other and to uplift a poor and impoverished community in rural South Africa in memory of their sons. For Stephen Kumalo, a poor black Anglican parson, the knowledge that one day the land he loves so much will be restored to the black people gives him the comfort and strength he needs to endure.

Aldous Huxley: Brave New World  

Brave New World explores a world which is scientifically ordered world where depth of feeling ceases to be and innovative ideas and artistic creativity of any kind are absent. It is a world in which individuality is no longer prized and both intellectual excitement and discovery are abolished. All of its inhabitants are laboratory-grown and brainwashed in their sleep. In this Brave New World happiness and stability are equated. We may not immediately see the relevance of Huxley’s point but as we contemplate our modern lives the book will certainly set us thinking.

Alice Hoffman: the River King  

The River King is a story in which raging passions flow through the novel much like the stream flowing through the town of Haddan in Massachusetts . The private school in the town is the fairy tale setting of the novel. The action comes from the way in which the lives of the characters are intertwined in the course of the year and the manner in which love is pursued and answered. Who to love is never an easy question and therefore hearts are broken and heroism must come into play.  

Alistair McLeod: No Great Mischief  

No Great Mischief explores the saga of a Canadian family over many generations. In the novel the distant long-ago is ever present and the tug of ancestral Scotland and of Gaelic with its inflections, rhythms, and song is as strong as if their ancestors had never really left Scotland to settle in a far away land. The interaction between two brothers and a sister allows for the impact of the loss of their parents early in life and clan history to be explored within an environment where cultural tensions continue to prevail. As they struggle to make sense of their lives, each depends on the support of the other to overcome their problems.

Anita Desai: Fasting, Feasting  

Fasting, Feasting  is a story of a brother and a sister and of their Indian parents who, together, are unyielding in their conservative views. The brother and sister struggle to come to terms with life – the sister in India and the brother in the United States where he is studying. The brother also struggles under the weight of family expectations and the sister tries to shake off the humiliation of an arranged marriage gone wrong. The yoke of the parents and of the traditions they live by cannot be lifted off and all that brother and sister can do is take part in tiny acts of rebellion and go on suffering.  

Anne-Marie MacDonald: Fall on Your Knees  

Fall on Your Knees is an epic tale of a Canadian family of four sisters and a father. It explores the relationship of each with the other and it delves into chilling half-buried secrets spanning five generations. The jazz scene of 1920 and World War 1 serve as ancillary backdrops.  

Antjie Krog: Country of My Skull  

Country of My Skull tells the story of human rights violations in the apartheid past as told to South Africa 's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Krog mixes personal reflections and the eloquent testimony given by victims to give an insight into the dirty acts of both perpetrators and victims in the apartheid era. Though the racial divide still prevails in South Africa Krog is hopeful that a better future awaits everyone.  

Arthur Miller:  Death of a Salesman  

Death of a Salesman is a profound play which puts the spotlight on the life of a self-deluded, self-promoting and self-defeating sixty-year old travelling salesman who is searching for where exactly his life went wrong. Although he realises that he is a failure he vainly portrayed himself to his boys as a figure of importance and success. Sadly all he succeeded in doing was to mislead his children and cause them to be failures like himself.  

Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things  

The God of Small Things is a poetic novel set in Kerala , India . It is the story of young twins Rahel and Estha who try to make something of their childhood. One fateful night their English cousin Sophie, who has come on a visit to India , drowns and the family is plunged into a crisis from which it does not recover. History, social taboos, family tensions, emotional complexities and local politics all combine in an ugly twist to overwhelm the family. With the occurrence of this family tragedy, Rahel is struck by the way in which people talk only about small things. It is these small things, however, which build up and eventually affect the behaviour and lives of people.  

Bapsi Sidhwa: Cracking India  

Cracking India is the story of a young Parsi girl called Lenny set in India at the time of partition. The people in her life are either spiritual or physical entities. On the religious side the Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs are embodiments not of spiritual enlightenment but of mutual hatred for one another. Religion is nothing but a tag which can be changed as easily as anything. The life of Lenny is impacted upon by the enormous social and cultural tensions and the confusion of the times she lived in. All around her were a multitude of people undergoing great pain and hardships. She too becomes what the events dictated. Her understanding of life and her self-consciousness are all forged in the flames that burnt at that time and it is no wonder that she would be equally scarred by them.  

Barbara Kingsolver: The Bean Trees  

The Bean Trees tells the story of Taylor, a gritty young woman, who wants to relish life by freeing herself from the fetters that bind her. As she heads west in her jalopy an Indian woman trusts a baby on to her and she accepts. At Tucson her jalopy dies and she finds herself confronting life in a desert. She works in a tyre garage and shares a room with a young divorcee who had been badly abused. The two share their lives and Taylor discovers that independence and motherhood are gifts but not without a price. Life, all life, is a great struggle.  

Bessie Head: Maru 

Maru is the story of the relationship between Prince Maru of the Tswana tribe and Margaret Cadmore, an outcast Masarwa girl from the despised Khoisan tribe. She accepts a teaching post at Dilepe, a remote Botswana village and in spite of being better educated than the Tswanas she is soon engulfed in racial prejudice and Botswana village politics. Maru and Margaret have to liberate themselves from the prejudice surrounding them in order to achieve a unity of souls. Their struggle is the struggle of all who live amongst people blinded by racial prejudice. In the end there are no clear answers – only the inevitable questions.  

Bjarne Reuter: The Boys of St Petri  

The Boys of St Petri is a Danish novel translated into English. It is the story of Lars and Gunnar and their young friends who hold secret meetings in the loft of St Petri church in Denmark , where their father is pastor. The boys, in the beginning, are involved in small acts of resistance against the Nazi army such as stealing soldier’s caps and puncturing the wheels of German military vehicles. The extent of their sabotage escalates when Otto, a defiant young man, joins the group. He has in his possession a stolen German luger and the boys are encouraged to intensify their struggle. Each member of the group has a different motive for belonging to the group. In the end the majority agree to steal explosives and blow up a train. The boys, with the exception of Otto, are then arrested by German troops. The novel is full of suspense and action.

Bryce Courtenay: Power of One  

The Power of One is the story of an English boy named Peekay who grows up on a farm in South Africa . He goes to a boarding school where Afrikaans is the prevailing language and the boys make fun of him because he is English. When his mother returns home after a mental breakdown, Peekay meets a boxer in the train and decides to become a boxer. He learns that in a country where discrimination is pervasive it is necessary to adopt the following motto: "First with the head and then with the heart, that's how a man stays ahead from the start." He uses his genius and his power as a boxer to negotiate the obstacles he encounters.  

Carol Shields: The Stone Diaries  

The Stone Diaries is the fictionalized autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett a conventional and unremarkable middle aged woman who was born in Manitoba . It explores the life of the fictional heroine and of all women born into the twentieth century. While there is nothing remarkable about her life the novel looks into her inner life and it is here that as a woman she asks:  "Why should men be allowed to strut under the privilege of their life adventures, wearing them like a breastful of medals, while women went all gray and silent beneath the weight of theirs?"

Charles Dickens: Great Expectations

Great Expectations is one of the shorter and more enjoyable novels by Charles Dickens. It tells the story of ‘Pip’ who is growing up in an English village with a wicked sister but sympathetic brother in law who shields him from his sister as much as he can. One day Pip encounters Abel Magwitch who is an escaped convict. His act of kindness to Magwitch results in time with his being endowed with a substantial fortune. Pip has no idea of his benefactor. Lifted from his humble circumstances the young gentleman pursues Estella the daughter of the bitterly estranged Miss Havisham. Estella was raised to torture the man who loved her in order for her mother to get her revenge. Pip undergoes many changes until he learns the truth of his fortune.  

Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre  

Jane Eyre is the story of a penniless orphan who leaves the custody of her cruel relatives to go to a boarding school where the situation is equally bad. She soon becomes a governess at Thornfield. There she falls in love with the cynical Mr Rochester. He too falls in love with her. As the scandalous secrets of Mr Rochester come to light, Jane’s integrity is tested to the very limit.  

Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard

The Cherry Orchard is a Russian play which explores the dilemma of the Ranevsky family as they face the grim prospect of losing their ancestral estate and the vast cherry orchard that goes with it. Mr Ranevsky had been an alcoholic and was therefore unable to mind his estate. His wife, to add to the family’s woes, had extravagant habits and after the death of her husband she precipitates the downfall of the family and puts the future of the estate into question. Idle and vain as a class, the Russian aristocracy were putting themselves at the mercy of such wealthy and unscrupulous people as Mr Lopakhin. While Anya and Trofimov fully recognise their plight, they nevertheless hold out the hope for a better tomorrow for the embattled nobility and for Russian society as a whole.

Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart  

Things Fall Apart  tells the story of the Ibo people in Nigeria . Its central character is Okonkwo a fierce and unyielding Ibo warrior. Okonkwo plays a pivotal role in the cultural life of his village until one day by accident his gun goes off and a fellow villager is killed. He has to go into exile and in his absence the English colonialist begin to take control of his country and village and soon Okonkwo finds himself in headlong conflict with the officials of the new colonial power. Suddenly the centre cannot hold and things begin to fall apart. (See the more detailed analysis of this novel at the end of this section)

Dambudzo Marechera: The House of Hunger  

House of Hunger is the story of a young Zimbabwean escaping the House of Poverty only to confront racism, police brutality and treachery from his own fellow black students. The book is a combination of a novella and some short stories. It is unified only through the recurring search for freedom against uneven odds. The book is a mixture of autobiography and fiction. The quality of the writing is excellent.

David Adams Richards: Mercy Among the Children  

Mercy Among the Children tells the story of Sydney Henderson who pushes Connie Devlin off the roof and is filled with horror regarding his action. He solemnly vows that if Connie lived after his fall he would never again harm anyone for as long as he lived. He is true to his word butat the same time is  trapped in dire poverty. He therefore begins to read Tolstoy and other writers to give himself a chance in life. This does not suffice. He is treated not for what he is but from where he comes and suspicion and contempt dog his every move. The university will not open its doors to him and though he finds respite in love he is implicated in the death of a teenager. His life is turned upside down and he must now fight an even greater battle to survive..   

David Guterson: Snow Falling on Cedars

Snow Falling on Cedars tells the story of Kabuo who is a Japanese-American charged with the murder of Carl Heine. Though he fought in the American army the prejudice against the naturalized Japanese is intense within the American island community. Kabuo, because of his Japanese descent, becomes a suspect and everything works against him. Even the person who is covering the trial has reasons to hate him. Ishmael Chambers is a bitterly embittered man. He lost an arm fighting against the Japanese and worse still, he lost the love of his life to Kabuo. Which way will he go and how will the people of the little island respond to the challenges that face all of them and which can only be negotiated through interdependence?  That is the question the novel explores.

David Malouf: Remembering Babylon  

Remembering Babylon is the story of Gemmy Fairley. He is castaway near Queensland in Australia . The aborogines rescue  him and give him a home with them. After sixteen years with his hosts Fairley decides to make contact with white Australians. With a sun-burnt face and limited English,  the people of his own race look upon him with extreme suspicion and fear. Their greatest fear is what he represents to them, viz that they too could lose their language and their culture and the gulf between them widens. They want to have nothing to do with him. The novel shows that a person could be a child of the place but that fact would not matter with those who settled from elsewhere and kept their culture alive. Humn beings in this regard are totally intractable.

Douglas Coupland: Generation X  

Generation X explores the lives of young people who came of age in an increasingly technological world where material goals dominate all else. Such people have serious emotional problems and often feel alienated. In the circumstances this Generation X searches for some kind of meaning in life. The issues that the novel raises are very pertinent to all of the young people living today.

E. Annie Proulx: The Shipping News  

The Shipping News is the story of Quoyle who makes his living writing about shipping news and car crashes for a local newspaper. The paper survives because it contains stories of sex abuse by its citizens. Here Quoyle finds escape from an evil wife and the nasty parents who are now deceased.

Edward Albee: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf  

Elie Wiesel: Night  

Elizabeth Jolley: My Father’s Moon  

Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms  

Eugene Ionesco: Rhinoceros

Eugene O’Neill: Long Day’s Journey into Night  

Evelyn Waugh:  A Handful of Dust  

F. Scott Fitzgerald: Tender Is the Night  

Gabriel Garcia Marques: One Hundred years of Solitude

Gabrielle Roy: The Tin Flute  

George Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion

George Orwell: Animal Farm

Gracy Ukala: Dizzy Angel  

Gunter Grass: The Tin Drum  

Hazel Rochman: Somehow Tenderness Survives  

Guy Vanderhaeghe: The English Man’s Boy  

Helen Garner: Monkey Grip  

Henry James: The Turn of the Screw  

Ian MacEwan: Amsterdam  

Ivan Vladislavic: The Folly

J. M. Coetzee: The Good Doctor  

J.M. Synge: Playboy of the Western World

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Jane Hamilton: The Book of Ruth

Jane Smiley: A Thousand Acres  

Jane Urquhart: The Underpainter

Joan Barfoot: Luck  

Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Faust  

John Irving: The World According to Garp  

John Knowles: A Separate Peace  

Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections  

Joseph Boyden: The Three Day Road  

Joseph Heller: Catch- 22

JRR Tolkien: Lord of the Rings  

Kamala Markandaya: Nectar in a Sieve  

K. Sello Duiker: The Quick Violence of Dreams  

Khushwant Singh: Train to Pakistan  

Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan  

Margaret Atwood:  Alias Grace  

Margaret Laurence: The Stone Angel  

Mark Mathabane: The Last Liberal

Maya Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 

Michael Ondaatje: The English Patient  

Mike Nicol: Ibis Tapestry  

Miriam Toews: A Complicated Kindness  

Mordecai Richler: Barney’s Version

Mulk Raj Anand: Untouchable  

Nadine Gordimer: The Bridegroom  

Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter  

Neil Simon: The Odd Couple  

Ngugi wa Thiong’o: A Grain of Wheat  

Noel Coward: Private Lives  

Olive Ann Burns: Cold Sassy Tree

Oscar Wilde: Lady Windemere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband    

Peter Shaeffer: The Royal Hunt of the Sun

Phaswane Mpe: Welcome to Our Hillbrow  

R. K. Narayan: Malgudi Days  

Robertson Davies: The Lyre of Orpheus  

Rohinton Mistry: A Fine Balance

Rudy Wiebe: A Discovery of Strangers  

Rudy Wiebe: A Discovery of Strangers  

Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot  

Sandra Birdsell:  Children of the Day  

Sandra Cisnero: The House on Mango Street

Shauna Singh Baldwin: What the Body Remembers

Sheri Reynolds: The Rapture of Canaan

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar

T.S. Eliot: Murder in the Cathedral  

Tendai Dhliwayo: Freedom Fighter

Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie

Thomas King: Green Grass 

Toni Morrison: Beloved

Tsitsi Dangarembga: Nervous Conditions

V. S. Naipaul: A Bend in the River  

Valerie Fitzgerald: Zemindar

Vikram Seth: A Suitable Boy  

Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

Walter Dean Myer: Somewhere in the Darkness 

Wayne Johnston: The Divine Ryans

William Faulkner: Sound and the Fury

Wole Soyinka: Madmen and Specialists  

Yukio Mishima: The Sound of Waves

Yvonne Vera: Butterfly Burning

Zakes Mda: The Whale Caller     

PART 2