All around the globe, dog-eared paperbacks sit on nightstands waiting to postpone their readers' rest. From the salacious to the literary, novels entertain and inspire with plots to follow and characters to root for. Though we take that dog-eared paperback for granted in the twenty-first century, suc

Charming, Epic, Medieval fiction, Pioneering, Sprawling

As the story goes, Don Quixote has read too many books about knights and experiences the world through the eyes of a valiant soldier. He is a hero and a fool. He is, simply speaking, insane. When Don Quixote encounters windmills, he sees giants and attacks them as any good knight would. As his

16th century (renaissance) literature, Epic, Funny, Hallucinatory, Huge, Layered, Parody, Pioneering, Playful

As an inquisitive woman with a critical eye, and as a member of the Chinese Communist Party who portrayed its flaws in her fiction, Ding Ling found herself in a precarious position. Her progressive vision moved her to both revere and criticize the Communist Party -- her critiques earned her ten years

Clever, Feminist, Pioneering, Political, Rebel, Women's literature

Violent and timely, contemporary and historical, true and fantastical, Bharati Mukherjee's work has been a windstorm sweeping up the major flavor of her times. Born into a wealthy, traditional Calcutta family in 1940, Mukherjee was raised and schooled in India, Great Britain, and the U.S. (where she

Eclectic, Intense, Pioneering, Political, Post-colonial literature, Women's literature