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Literature by Place

It's kind of crazy to what extent geography can inform an author's work. Jack London spent most of his life at sea, dog-sledding across Alaska, boxing and generally being an adventurous guy who would put today's REI crowd to shame. Would he have penned some of the greatest American novels otherwise? especially ones concerned primarily with man battling the elements for survival in both a mental and physical sense? Very probably not, which explains why Oscar Wilde didn't write about wolves and crazy ship captains.

No, Oscar Wilde wrote primarily about fops and society people parrying witticisms incessantly. That's not to say his work has no place in a serious consideration of literature—au contraire, The Picture of Dorian Grey is one of the finest novels written in English. It's just more evidence that if you're an author who lives in the Canadian mountains or the clubs of London, your writing will reflect that.

Physical terrain isn't the only consideration. Sartre wrote about people lolling about with no real sense of purpose except to drink wine and smoke cigarettes and look languorous because he lived in France in the 1940s. Friedrich Nietzsche had immense mustaches and espoused a form of nihilism because he was German. The Russians wrote impossibly long novels because they lived in Russia. And Chinua Achebe was almost entirely influenced by his African upbringing.

That's not to say no one can write well about a context they haven't experienced firsthand. I'm pretty sure Robert Heinlein never visited Mars, and even if he did it wasn't as his books describe; the same goes for Bradbury. And no, Roald Dahl was never lost in a delightfully (though at times, terrifyingly) absurd chocolate factory. Yet even with these examples, the authors conveyed essentially the attitudes of the countries they came from—Heinlein and Bradbury from the U.S., Dahl from the U.K.

Our Literature by Place subcategories are admittedly Anglo-centric. North American literature features, well, American literature, and you can be pretty sure British literature reflects the same system; everything else goes in world literature. We have plenty of non-American or -British literature, we just don't have much from any one place besides those two. At any rate, we hope these categories are helpful, and if they guide you toward one book you're looking for (or maybe one you didn't even know existed), they've done their job.

Review by C. Hollis Crossman
C. Hollis Crossman used to be a child. Now he's a husband and father who loves church, good food, and weird stuff. He might be a mythical creature, but he's definitely not a centaur. Read more of his reviews here.
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59 Items found Print
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Active Filters: 20th & 21st Century Literature, Action & Adventure Stories, Adult
African Queen
by C. S. Forester
from International Collectors Library
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Aku-Aku
by Thor Heyerdahl
from Rand McNally
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Blue at the Mizzen
Aubrey/Maturin #20
by Patrick O'Brian
from W. W. Norton and Co.
Nautical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$7.50 (1 in stock)
Brendan Voyage
Modern Library Exploration
by Tim Severin
from Modern Library
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$19.00
Call of the Wild
by Jack London
from Heritage Press
for 7th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Captain Blood
Penguin Classics
by Rafael Sabatini
from Penguin Classics
Historical Romance for 7th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$16.00
Circus
by Alistair MacLean
from Doubleday & Company
for 9th-Adult
in CLEARANCE BOOKS (Location: ZCLE)
Endless Knot
Song of Albion #3
by Stephen R. Lawhead
2nd edition from Thomas Nelson Publishers
Celtic Fantasy for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$12.00
Endless Knot
Song of Albion #3
by Stephen R. Lawhead
Reprint from Thomas Nelson Publishers
Celtic Fantasy for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Far Pavilions
by M. M. Kaye
from St. Martin's Griffin
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Fortune of War
Aubrey/Maturin #6
by Patrick O'Brian
from W. W. Norton and Co.
Nautical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.50 (1 in stock)
Gods and Generals
by Jeff Shaara
from Ballantine Books
Historical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$8.99 $5.00 (1 in stock)
Golden Ocean
by Patrick O'Brian
from W. W. Norton and Co.
Nautical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$7.50 (1 in stock)
H.M.S. Surprise
Aubrey/Maturin #3
by Patrick O'Brian
from W. W. Norton and Co.
Nautical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Hobbit
by J.R.R. Tolkien
from Houghton Mifflin
for 5th-Adult
in Fantasy Fiction (Location: FIC-FAN)
Hobbit
by J.R.R. Tolkien
17th Printing from Ballantine Books
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$15.00 (1 in stock)
Hobbit, The
by J.R.R. Tolkien, author and illustrator
from William Morrow & Company
for 5th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$75.00
Kon-Tiki
by Thor Heyerdahl
from Pocket Books
Non-fiction/Adventure for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$8.99
Kon-Tiki
by Thor Heyerdahl, Translated by F. H. Lyon
from Rand McNally
Non-fiction/Adventure for 8th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Kon-Tiki Expedition
by Thor Heyerdahl, illustrated by Eric Palmquist
from Rand McNally
Non-fiction/Adventure for 8th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Man Who Never Was
by Ewen Montagu
from J.B. Lippincott Co.
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage History & Biographies (Location: VIN-HIS)
Mandala of Sherlock Holmes
by Jamyang Norbu
from Bloomsbury Publishing
for Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Master and Commander
Aubrey/Maturin #1
by Patrick O'Brian
from W. W. Norton and Co.
Nautical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Master and Commander
Aubrey/Maturin #1
by Patrick O'Brian
from W. W. Norton and Co.
Nautical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Out of the Silent Planet
Space Trilogy Book 1
by C. S. Lewis
from Charles Scribner's Sons
Allegorical Science Fiction for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$17.99 $10.00 (1 in stock)
Out of the Silent Planet
Space Trilogy Book 1
by C. S. Lewis
from Charles Scribner's Sons
Allegorical Science Fiction for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$24.00
Out of the Silent Planet
Space Trilogy Book 1
by C. S. Lewis
46th Printing from Collier Books
for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Perelandra
Space Trilogy Book 2
by C. S. Lewis
from Charles Scribner's Sons
Allegorical Science Fiction for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$16.99
Perelandra
Space Trilogy Book 2
by C. S. Lewis
from Charles Scribner's Sons
Allegorical Science Fiction for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$25.00
Post Captain
Aubrey/Maturin #2
by Patrick O'Brian
from W. W. Norton and Co.
Nautical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Riders of the Purple Sage
by Zane Grey
from Dover Publications
Westerns for 8th-Adult
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Riders of the Purple Sage
by Zane Grey
from Penguin Books
Westerns for 8th-Adult
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Riders of the Purple Sage
by Zane Grey
from Oxford University
Westerns for 8th-Adult
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Rising Tide
by Jeff Shaara
from Ballantine Books
Historical Non-fiction for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Saga of Eric Brighteyes
by H. Rider Haggard
1st edition from Leaves of Gold Press
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$29.95
Saga of Eric Brighteyes
by H. Rider Haggard
1st edition from Newcastle Publishing Co
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Scaramouche
Signet Classics
by Rafael Sabatini
from Signet Classics
Historical Romance for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Scarlet
The King Raven Trilogy Book 2
by Stephen R. Lawhead
from Thomas Nelson Publishers
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$18.99
Scarlet Pimpernel
Signet Classics
by Baroness Orczy
from Signet Classics
Action/Adventure for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$5.95
Scarlet Pimpernel
by Baroness Orczy
from Bantam Books
Action/Adventure for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$5.95
Sea-Hawk
by Rafael Sabatini
from W. W. Norton and Co.
Historical Romance for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$23.95
Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon
by Larry Millett
from Penguin Classics
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
by Gary Kinder
from Vintage Classics
for 9th-Adult
in Clearance: Fiction (Location: ZCLE-FIC)
$3.00 (1 in stock)
Silver Hand
Song of Albion #2
by Stephen R. Lawhead
1st edition from Lion Publishing
Celtic Fantasy for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight / Pearl / Sir Orfeo
by Anonymous, J. R. R. Tolkien (Translator)
from Ballantine Books
Medieval Fairy Tale/Poetry for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$8.99
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight / Pearl / Sir Orfeo
by Anonymous, J. R. R. Tolkien (Translator)
from Mariner Books
Medieval Fairy Tale/Poetry for 8th-Adult
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
$18.99
Space Trilogy - Hardcover Set
by C. S. Lewis
from Simon and Schuster
Allegorical Science Fiction/Fantasy for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$71.10
Space Trilogy - Quality Softcover Set
by C. S. Lewis
from Simon and Schuster
Allegorical Science Fiction/Fantasy for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$42.37
Surgeon's Mate
Aubrey/Maturin #7
by Patrick O'Brian
from W. W. Norton and Co.
Nautical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
from Grosset & Dunlap
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Thirty-Nine Steps
Dover Thrift Editions
by John Buchan
from Dover Publications
Action Adventure for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$3.00
Thirty-Nine Steps
by John Buchan
from Penguin Classics
Action Adventure for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$13.00
Thirty-Nine Steps
by John Buchan
from Houghton Mifflin
Action Adventure for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Three Hostages
by John Buchan
1926 printing from Hodder & Stoughton
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Tuck
The King Raven Trilogy Book 3
by Stephen R. Lawhead
Reprint from Thomas Nelson Publishers
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$18.99
Watership Down
by Richard Adams
from Charles Scribner's Sons
Animal Fiction for 7th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$19.99
Way to Dusty Death
by Alistair MacLean
from Doubleday & Company
for 9th-Adult
in CLEARANCE BOOKS (Location: ZCLE)
White Fang
Dover Thrift Editions
by Jack London
from Dover Publications
Action/Adventure for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00
White Fang
by Jack London, illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull
from SeaWolf Press
Action/Adventure for 10th-Adult
in Seawolf Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SW)
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