Ireland. Ire. Irony. This euphonious trio of words explains the humor of Jonathan Swift; though he reportedly bore the most dour countenance in history, his wit could make readers laugh through his bile. Swift's "Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burde

18th century literature, Agitated, Augustan literature, Dystopic, Excessive, Ironic, Playful, Sardonic, Witty

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

"The writer is in a god-like relation to what he creates," Martin Amis once mused in an interview. The question that logically follows is: what kind of god is Amis? Well, he is clearly not the god of Leibniz, who could only create the "best of all possible worlds." In fact, the case could easily be m

Catastrophe, Dark, Death, Dystopic, Funny, Ironic, Postmodern fiction, Self-reflection

"Every writer is, in the long run, on his own, but it helps, in the most practical way to have a tradition. The English language was mine; the [English] tradition was not." Born and raised in Trinidad to a family of Indian Brahmin origin, writer V. S. Naipaul manipulates his rootlessness into an ab

Dystopic, Mythic, Open-ended, Political, Post-colonial literature