The first case of the famous Victorian private detective Sherlock Holmes. After returning to London, Dr. Watson, a veteran of the second Anglo-Afghan war, encounters Sherlock Holmes, a private investigator. Holmes is requested to solve a mysterious murder case, they investigate together. They follow the clue of a wedding ring left behind at the crime […]
A novel about desire, sexuality, power and coming to terms with life’s adversities. The story is set in post-aphartheid South Africa: David Lurie works as a professor for English in Cape Town when an affair with one of his students costs him his job. Not only does he quit university but also living in the […]
A young adult novel revolving around prejudice, racism and discrimination in the USA. Justyce is top of his class in school and thought he had left his neighborhood behind but what he cannot shake off is the bitter reality of racist assaults on him by white police. When one day he draws the attention of […]
A tragic novel about love, the American dream, acceleration and unrelenting optimism. When narrator Nick moves to a prestigious community on Long Island (New York), he is soon introduced to his mysterious neighbor Jay Gatsby. Little is known about Mr Gatsby except that he is fabulously rich and regularly holds huge parties in his luxurious […]
A thrilling metafictional novel about identity, ideals, racism, terrorism, American patriotism and imperialism, loyalty and distrust. Frame narrative: On a single afternoon at a Lahore café, Changez, a Pakistani man tells an unnamed American stranger about his life: Beginning with his elite education at Princeton and continuing into professional success in glittering New York City. […]
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 dystopian novel leads the reader down a dark path towards the perils of religion and oppressive patriarchy. A religious shift in the US-American government calling itself the ‘Pure Movement’ results in women being stripped of their voices: Handcuffs every woman has to wear count their spoken words and if the daily number exceeds 100, […]
In The Crucible, Arthur Miller tells a tale about how little is needed for a small community to turn on each other. When rumors of witchcraft arise in rural Salem during the 1690s, it does not take long for people to start to denounce anybody in order to save their own skin. Eventually, truth is […]
A Shakespearian tragedy of forceful love, hate, violence, identity and society. In Verona two powerful families, the Montegues and the Capulets, are in a feud. One night, at a ball, Romeo, son of the house Montegue meets Juliet, a Capulet, and the two fall in love. They get married secretly, but Juliet’s father does not […]
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 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 combination of a graphic novel and historical fiction tells the story of a little boy discovering the evolution of filmmaking. The orphan Hugo lives hidden in a train station in Paris. One day he is caught stealing at a toy booth. He starts to work there and becomes friends with the owner’s goddaughter Isabelle. […]
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 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 […]