A relentless exploration of racial prejudice and finding your voice as a young adult. 16-year-old Starr is a black student attending an elite school with a white majority, always carefully presenting herself in order to fit in. When her friend is accidentally shot by a police officer in front of her eyes, Starr is not […]
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 […]
A young adult novel about conflicts and migration, family relationships and a boy fighting for survival. 14-year old Alem is half Ethiopian and half Eritrean. Because his parents countries are at war with each other, his only way to safety leads him to Europe. In London he struggles to be officially recognised as a refugee […]
The young wizard Harry broadens his knowledge and skills in the second volume of the Harry Potter series. Together with his friends Ron and Hermine, he critically investigates Hogwart’s history and the continuing conflict between students from Gryffindor and Slytherin – in which identity seems to play a major role.
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 […]
After surviving the adventures in the Harry Potter novels and triumphing over the evil Lord Voldemort, Harry, Hermione and Ron have grown up and find themselves on platform 9 3/4. Together with Rose, the daughter of Harry’s friends and Albus, Harry’s son they wait for the Hogwarts Express to take the children to Hogwarts for […]
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 […]
Featuring accessible language and detailed illustrations, this collection comprises comic strip versions of the following seven plays: Julius Ceasar, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Winter’s Tale, Hamlet, The Tempest.
Featuring accessible language and detailed illustrations, this collection comprises comic strip versions of the following seven plays: The Merchant of Venice, Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, Twelth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, Richard III.
A collection of Wilde’s tales of true beauty, the celebration of loyalty, selfless love, wit and aestheticism published in The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891). In “The Selfish Giant”, a giant chases children playing in his garden off and builds a high wall to keep them out. From […]
A comedy of manners on the constraints of morality, the importance of lineage, Victorian values and hypocrisies. Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff are two wealthy gentlemen who invent fictional characters as an excuse to leave their respective home – a strategy known as ‘Bunburying’. Jack intends to marry Algernon’s cousin Gwendolen Fairfax. To see her […]
A dystopian novel on social hierarchies, the progress of science and technology and psychological manipulation. In the year 2540, society has grown into a caste system that seeks to attain absolute perfection: People are no longer born, but genetically modified and conditioned to behave as perfectly functioning members of society. For most, happiness is controlled […]