At the mention of international intrigue and espionage, we naturally think of dashing secret agents who play roulette in Monacco while dressed in sparkling white dinner jackets. If the story involves a mad dictator, we expect his adversary to be a clever and precise dandy, whose smart lip can undo th

Ironic, Melancholy, Post-war literature, Power, Religious, Tragic

The context for Malcolm Lowry's masterpiece, "Under the Volcano," is simple: a single day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin. It happens to be his last. The place is Quauhnahuac, Mexico, the day the Day of the Dead. As the locals celebrate the souls of the deceased, Firmin (also known as "the Consul"), h

Death, Dense, Euphoric, Hallucinatory, Modernist literature, Sprawling, Tragic

It may come as a shock that the 'boys' club' of Science Fiction was founded by a 19-year-old girl, but the strange life of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley makes it seem quite logical. Shelley's "Frankenstein" (think Gothic manor meets modern laboratory) was an all-too-sane response to the mix of idealism

Catastrophe, Dystopic, Intense, Monumental, Romantic literature, Technology, Tragic

In Sophocles' world, the gods have receded. They've already determined (more or less) the fate of human beings and are content to watch from a comfortable distance. Of course, it's unclear exactly what their motives are; it all seems basically arbitrary and cruel. Indeed, the morality of the gods is

Classical, Classical greek, Excessive, Pathos, Sublime, Tense, Tragic, Violent