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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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Active Filters: 20th & 21st Century Literature, Trade Paperback, Used Books & Materials
1984
by George Orwell
from Harcourt
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$17.00 $11.00 (1 in stock)
All the King's Men
by Robert Penn Warren, edited and afterword by Noel Polk
from Mariner Books
for Adult
1947 Pulitzer Prize
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$10.00 (1 in stock)
American Childhood
by Annie Dillard
from Harper & Row
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Atlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand
Reprint from Plume Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$12.00 (1 in stock)
Beloved
by Toni Morrison
from Vintage Classics
for Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$3.00 (1 in stock)
Best of Father Brown
by G. K. Chesterton
from Everyman's Library
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$9.95 $6.00 (1 in stock)
Black Like Me
by John Howard Griffin & Robert Bonazzi
35th anniversary from Signet Classics
for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$9.99 $6.00 (1 in stock)
Black Odyssey
by Mary Cable
from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in Slavery & the Underground Railroad (Location: HISA-19SL)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Blue Like Jazz
by Donald Miller
from Thomas Nelson Publishers
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$3.00 (3 in stock)
Blue Shoes and Happiness
No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #7
by Alexander McCall Smith
Edition from Anchor Books
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.50 (2 in stock)
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
from HarperCollins
Dystopian Literature for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$17.99 $7.00 (8 in stock)
Bridal Wreath
by Sigrid Undset
from Vintage Books
for Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
by Ernest Hemingway
Finca Vigia Ed from Charles Scribner's Sons
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Cry, the Beloved Country
by Alan Paton
5th edition from Charles Scribner's Sons
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Cry, the Beloved Country
by Alan Paton
from Charles Scribner's Sons
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$17.00 $6.00 (1 in stock)
Death of a Salesman
by Arthur Miller
from Penguin Putnam
American Tragedy for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$15.00 $8.00 (1 in stock)
Dubliners
Dover Thrift Editions
by James Joyce
from Dover Publications
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$7.00 $4.00 (1 in stock)
Enchantress of Florence
by Salman Rushdie
Reprint from Anchor Books
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.50 (1 in stock)
Experiment in Criticism
by C. S. Lewis
Reissue from Cambridge University
Literature Guide/Resource for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$19.99 $14.00 (1 in stock)
Farewell to Arms
by Ernest Hemingway
from Charles Scribner's Sons
for 11th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$15.00 $10.00 (1 in stock)
For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Ernest Hemingway
from Charles Scribner's Sons
Realistic Fiction for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$18.99 $10.00 (1 in stock)
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)
$14.95 $6.50 (1 in stock)
Glass Menagerie
by Tennessee Williams
5th edition from New Directions
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$12.95 $7.00 (1 in stock)
Glass Menagerie
by Tennessee Williams
from Dramatists Play Service
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$2.50 (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)
$25.99 $7.50 (1 in stock)
Good Husband of Zebra Drive
No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #8
by Alexander McCall Smith
from Anchor Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.50 (2 in stock)
Good Husband of Zebra Drive
No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #8
by Alexander McCall Smith
from Pantheon Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Reissue from Charles Scribner's Sons
Realistic Fiction for 9th-12th grade
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$17.00 $9.00 (2 in stock)
Grendel
by John Gardner
from Vintage Classics
for 11th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$12.95 $8.00 (1 in stock)
H. M. S. Surprise
Aubrey/Maturin #3
by Patrick O'Brian
from W. W. Norton and Co.
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$7.50 (1 in stock)
Home to Holly Springs
by Jan Karon
1st edition from Viking Press
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
House on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros
from Vintage Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$11.95 $4.00 (1 in stock)
How I Got This Way
by Patrick F. McManus
from Henry Holt and Company
for 10th grade-adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
In Our Time
by Ernest Hemingway
from Charles Scribner's Sons
for 11th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.50 (1 in stock)
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #6
by Alexander McCall Smith
from Anchor Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.50 (1 in stock)
Invisible Heart
by Russell Roberts
from MIT Press
for Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$27.95 $8.00 (3 in stock)
Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
from Quality Paperback Book Club
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
by Susanna Clarke
from Bloomsbury Publishing
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$9.00 (1 in stock)
Joy Luck Club
by Amy Tan
Later Printing
for Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Jungle, The
Norton Critical Editions
by Upton Sinclair
Norton Critical Edition from W. W. Norton and Co.
Social Commentary for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$15.00 (1 in stock)
Kalahari Typing School for Men
No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #4
by Alexander Mccall Smith
1st Anchor Books Edition from Anchor Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.50 (1 in stock)
Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
from Riverhead Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
from Riverhead Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$16.00 $10.00 (1 in stock)
Little Prince
by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
from Scholastic Inc.
Fantasy for 3rd-8th grade
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$3.50 (1 in stock)
Little Prince
by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
from Harvest House
Fantasy for 3rd-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00 (2 in stock)
Man for All Seasons
by Robert Bolt
1st Vintage Intl Ed April 1990 from Vintage Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$15.00 $8.00 (1 in stock)
Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
from Penguin Classics
for Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$19.00 $9.50 (1 in stock)
Meaning of Everything
by Simon Winchester
Reprint from Oxford University
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$7.00 (1 in stock)
Metamorphosis
by Franz Kafka
from Bantam Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$3.00 (1 in stock)
Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides
Reprint from Picador
for 11th-Adult
Pulitzer Prize Winner
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Miracle at Speedy Motors
No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #9
by Alexander Mccall Smith
Reprint from Anchor Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.50 (1 in stock)
Miracle Worker
by William Gibson
from Charles Scribner's Sons
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$13.99 $6.00 (2 in stock)
Mistress of Husaby
by Sigrid Undset
from Vintage Books
for Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Morality for Beautiful Girls
No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #3
by Alexander McCall Smith
from Anchor Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.50 (2 in stock)
Morbid Taste for Bones
Brother Cadfael
by Ellis Peters
from Mysterious Press
for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$3.50 (2 in stock)
Never Sniff A Gift Fish
by Patrick F. McManus
from Henry Holt and Company
for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$17.99 $7.50 (1 in stock)
New Song
Mitford Series Book 5
by Jan Karon
from Penguin Putnam
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Night
by Elie Wiesel
Revised from Hill & Wang
Autobiographies & Memoirs for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$13.00 $4.00 (9 in stock)
No Less Than Victory
by Jeff Shaara
1st edition from Ballantine Books
for Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
O Pioneers
by Willa Cather
from Dover Publications
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$2.50 (1 in stock)
One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
Thursday Next Book 6
by Jasper Fforde
from Penguin Putnam
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$17.00 $8.00 (1 in stock)
Orthodoxy
by C. K. Chesterton
from Moody Press
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$9.99 $5.00 (1 in stock)
Our Town
by Thornton Wilder
from HarperCollins
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$14.99 $7.50 (3 in stock)
Out to Canaan
Mitford Series Book 4
by Jan Karon
from Penguin Putnam
Adult Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Ox-Bow Incident
by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
Reissue from Modern Library
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$3.50 (1 in stock)
Passage to India
by E. M. Forster
from Harcourt
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$13.99 $8.00 (1 in stock)
Persepolis
by Marjane Satrapi
1st edition from Pantheon Books
for 10th-Adult
in Comic Books & Graphic Novels (Location: FIC-COMIC)
$8.00 (2 in stock)
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
by Annie Dillard
from HarperCollins
Meditation/Philosophy for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$18.99 $9.00 (1 in stock)
Promise
by Chaim Potok
from Anchor Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Red House Mystery
by A. A. Milne
Book Club Edition from E.P. Dutton & Co.
Mystery/Suspense for 7th-10th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Red River to Appomattox
The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 3
by Shelby Foote
from Vintage Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$18.00 (1 in stock)
Right Attitude to Rain
by Alexander McCall Smith
from Anchor Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.50 (1 in stock)
River and the Gauntlet
by S. L. A. Marshall
from Time-Life Books
for 11th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$4.50 (1 in stock)
Seabiscuit
by Laura Hillenbrand
from Ballantine Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Secret Sharer and Other Stories
by Joseph Conrad
from Dover Publications
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00 $3.00 (1 in stock)
Separate Peace
by John Knowles
from Charles Scribner's Sons
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$16.00 $8.50 (3 in stock)
Shepherds Abiding
Mitford Years Book 8
by Jan Karon
from Penguin Putnam
for 11th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Shipping News
by E. Annie Proulx
1st edition from Charles Scribner's Sons
for Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Singer
by Calvin Miller
from InterVarsity Press
Allegorical Fantasy for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$3.00 (1 in stock)
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 $9.00 (1 in stock)
Song
by Calvin Miller
from InterVarsity Press
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$1.50 (1 in stock)
Survival in Auschwitz
by Primo Levi
1st edition from Touchstone
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$17.99 $9.00 (2 in stock)
Teaching a Stone to Talk
by Annie Dillard
Revised from Harper Perennial
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$15.99 $8.00 (1 in stock)
Tears of the Giraffe
No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2
by Alexander McCall Smith
from Anchor Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.50 (2 in stock)
The Crucible
by Arthur Miller
from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$16.00 $8.00 (1 in stock)
The Robe
by Lloyd Douglas
from Houghton Mifflin
Historical Fiction for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$19.99 $10.00 (1 in stock)
These High, Green Hills
Mitford Series Book 3
by Jan Karon
from Penguin Putnam
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini
from Riverhead Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Through Painted Deserts
by Donald Miller
from Thomas Nelson Publishers
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$7.00 (1 in stock)
To Own a Dragon
by Donald Miller
from Thomas Nelson Publishers
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf
from Quality Paperback Book Club
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Two Towers
Lord of the Rings Trilogy #2
by J. R. R. Tolkien
from Houghton Mifflin
Fantasy for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$7.00 (1 in stock)
Uncle Misha's Partisans
by Yuri Suhl
3rd edition
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$3.50 (1 in stock)
Untune the Sky
by Doug Wilson
from Veritas Press
for 10th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$8.40 $6.00 (1 in stock)
Walk in the Woods
by Bill Bryson
from Broadway Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$19.00 $7.50 (1 in stock)
War
by Sebastian Junger
from Twelve
for Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Whistling Season
by Ivan Doig
from Mariner Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$7.00 (1 in stock)
Woman Warrior
by Maxine Hong Kingston
from Vintage Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
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