A Shakespearian comedy on love, jealousy, foolishness, the power of dreaming and the supernatural. In ancient Athens, Egeus wants to force his daughter Hermia to marry Demetrius, even though she is in love with Lysander. Helena loves Demetrius but he doesn’t love her back. Hermia and Lysander decide to run away, and Demetrius and Helena […]
A Shakespearian tragedy on hypocrisy, murder, guilt and remorse. Macbeth, the brave Scottish general of King Duncan revives a prophecy by three witches that one day he will become the new king of Scotland. Imbued with ambition he takes the throne and becomes a tyrannic ruler who plunges the land of his people in misfortune […]
This 19th century best-selling novel about human trafficking, violence and slavery follows Tom, a middle-aged, enslaved African-American slave. As Tom is sold again and again, his life fully depends on the mercy and goodwill of his current owner… The novel is praised for having laid the groundwork for the abolition of slavery, but also harshly […]
This powerful novel on violence, betrayal, dehumanisation and redemption follows the life of a child soldier in an unnamed West-African country. Written by an American author of Nigerian parents, this novel tells the story of civil war from the perspective of Agu, a young boy who lives with his family in a small village. One […]
A story about the Troubles in Ireland and an unemployed teenager caught in a bloody conflict. Cal is a member of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. Like his peers, he goes to school but unlike his peers, he occasionally works as a driver for the Irish Republican Army IRA. This way he becomes complicit […]
An epistolary novel about oppression, abuse and the power of love. Celie is an African-American teenager who grows up in poverty with her younger sister in a small village in Georgia and is raped by her father Alphonso at the age of fourteen. Living around abusive men, Celie builds relationships with other black women and […]
This poem illustrates why Zephaniah himself rejected the title Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2003: A rhyming critique of authors who work towards and accept awards only to compromise their voice afterwards.
An empowering poem on migration and diversity creating an understanding for the fact that it takes so little to turn a ‘someone’ into a refugee because, following the speaker, we ‘all came here from somewhere’.
A dystopian novel between loyalty and betrayal, publicity and privacy. When Mae is offered to work at The Circle, an influential tech company, she could not be happier. It is only when she realizes the company’s desire to permeate ever more fields of their customers’ lives that Mae starts to wonder where the use of […]
This novel portrays abuse, resilience, violence and a girl fighting for her rights. The story follows 15-year-old Aiyana’s escape from a brutal patriarchal riverboat community in Arkansas in the 1930s. Having been denied any education and having suffered from her abusive father, this young heroine sets out to flee with only her grandmother and brother […]
This story about loss and release came second in the Costa Short Story Awards 2019: The reader follows a father and his son on a hike along a mountainous path. What starts as a nice enough pastime quickly makes a turn for the worse…
A dystopian novel on gender, sex, fertility, rebellion, and love. In the near future, most women have become infertile and the USA have transformed into a theocracy where women are either the wives of party officials, supposed to take care of the household, or have to take part in a bizarre ritual. Offred is one […]
A magical realist novel about dependence and independence, myth and reality, power and self-reflexivity. Saleem is born at midnight, 15 August 1947, which is India’s day of independence. Growing up, he discovers his telepathic abilities and finds out that children born in India on this particular day (so-called Midnight’s Children) are gifted with magical powers. […]
A novel about fate and egotism, hatred and bigotry. Cándido and América are a married couple from Mexico, living unregistered in the suburbs of Los Angeles. One day Cándido is hit by the car of Delaney, a liberal middle-class white man, who reimburses him with a twenty-dollar bill. With Cándido being injured and unable to […]
This realistic novel features a group of young people in the1980’s Edinburgh that have to deal with heroin and alcohol addiction, violence and crime. Renton, Mark and Simon usually steal to get the money for their next hit. The story addresses friendship, punk and rebellion – it reveals the causes and outcomes of unemployment, the […]
A novel navigating peer-pressure, friendship, love, migration and casual racism. Chevalier retells the story of Shakespeare’s play Othello but set in Washington, D.C. in the 1970s. 11 year old protagonist Osei, the son of a diplomat, starts his first day at a new school, the fourth school in six years. Luckily, he finds a potential […]
A modern tragedy negotiating reality and illusion within the pursuit of the American Dream. Willy Loman is a travelling salesman who lives with his wife, Linda, in New York. Besides being constantly stressed out by his job, driving around and earning barely enough money to make a living, he is also disappointed by his son […]
A Gothic novel about advances in science and moral responsibilities they bring about. Victor Frankenstein is a gifted young scientist living and studying in Switzerland. Through the recently discovered ‘wonder of electricity’ he is able to give life to his own creation – a monstrous creature. However, Victor does not take responsibility for the monster […]