Literature by Place - Exodus Books

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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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Used Books & Materials

	Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 2019 Reprint from SeaWolf Press for 7th-Adult in Seawolf Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SW) $6.00 (1 in stock)
	Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass Macmillan Classics by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by John Tenniel from Macmillan Fantasy for 7th-Adult in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC) $18.00 (1 in stock)
	Beowulf by Anonymous, translated by Douglas Wilson from Canon Press for 7th-Adult in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED) $14.00 $8.00 (1 in stock)
	Black Arrow Dover Evergreen Classics by Robert Louis Stevenson from Dover Publications Historical Fiction for 7th-10th grade in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV) $5.00 (1 in stock)
	Book of Lost Tales Part I History of Middle-Earth Volume 1 by J. R. R. Tolkien & Christopher Tolkien Book Club Edition from Houghton Mifflin for 7th-12th grade in Fantasy Fiction (Location: FIC-FAN) $12.00 (1 in stock)
	Call of the Wild Dover Thrift Editions by Jack London from Dover Publications Action/Adventure for 7th-10th grade in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20) $3.00 $2.00 (1 in stock)
	Celtic Fairy Tales by Neil Philip, illustrated by Isabelle Brent from Viking Press for 3rd-8th grade in Myths, Fairy Tales & Folklore for Children (Location: FIC-MYT) $12.00 (1 in stock)
	Children of Odin The Book of Northern Myths by Padraic Colum, illustrated by Willy Pogany from Macmillan Norse Mythology for 3rd-8th grade in Myths, Fairy Tales & Folklore for Children (Location: FIC-MYT) $40.00 (1 in stock)
	Eternal Cycle Indian Myth Time-Life Myth & Mankind from Time-Life Books for 7th-Adult in Time-Life Myth & Mankind Series (Location: FIC-MYTH) $4.00 (1 in stock)
	Favourite Tales from Grimm and Andersen by Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, illustrated by Jirí Trnka 1983 Printing from Paul Hamlyn for 4th-8th grade in Myths, Fairy Tales & Folklore for Children (Location: FIC-MYT) $18.00 (1 in stock)
	First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells from Magnum for 7th-Adult in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC) $3.00 (1 in stock)
	Gift of the Magi & Other Short Stories Dover Thrift Editions by O. Henry from Dover Publications for 4th-10th grade in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20) $5.00 $2.00 (4 in stock)
	Gift of the Magi by O. Henry, illustrated by Kevin King from Simon and Schuster for 4th-10th grade in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20) $5.00 (1 in stock)
	Gods of Sun & Sacrifice Aztec & Maya Myth Time-Life Myth & Mankind from Time-Life Books for 7th-Adult in Time-Life Myth & Mankind Series (Location: FIC-MYTH) $7.00 (1 in stock)
	Great American Short Stories from Dover Publications for 7th-Adult in Short Stories (Location: LIT-ANTH) $8.00 $4.00 (1 in stock)
	Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift from Dover Publications for 7th-Adult in 18th Century Literature (Location: LIT5-18) $6.00 $4.00 (1 in stock)
	Hobbit (Perma-bound) There and Back Again by J. R. R. Tolkien 2^nd edition from Del Rey Fantasy for 5th-9th grade in Fantasy Fiction (Location: FIC-FAN) $3.00 (3 in stock)
	Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan from HarperCollins for 4th-7th grade in Historical Fiction (Location: FIC-HIF) $9.99 $4.50 (1 in stock)
	Invisible Man by H. G. Wells, with an introduction by W. Warren Wagar and an afterword by Scott Westerfeld from Signet Classics Science Fiction for 7th-Adult in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19) $3.00 (2 in stock)
	It's Perfectly True and Other Stories by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Paul Leyssac and illustrated by Richard Bennett from Harcourt, Brace & World for 5th-10th grade in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC) $8.00 (1 in stock)
	Journeys through Dreamtime Oceanian Myth Time-Life Myth & Mankind from Time-Life Books for 7th-Adult in Time-Life Myth & Mankind Series (Location: FIC-MYTH) $4.00 (1 in stock)
	Kidnapped Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751 Scribner Illustrated Classics by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by N. C. Wyeth from Atheneum Historical Fiction for 7th-10th grade in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV) $14.50 (1 in stock)
	Kidnapped Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751 by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by N. C. Wyeth and Graham Oakley from Dilithium Press, Ltd. Historical Fiction for 7th-10th grade in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV) $12.00 (1 in stock)
	Land of the Dragon Chinese Myth Time-Life Myth & Mankind from Time-Life Books for 7th-Adult in Time-Life Myth & Mankind Series (Location: FIC-MYTH) $4.00 (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 1^st edition from Harcourt for 3rd-Adult in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20) $8.00 (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)
	Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery from Harcourt Fantasy for 3rd-Adult in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20) $7.50 (1 in stock)
	Pilgrim's Progress - Updated Edition by John Bunyan, edited by Donna Sundblad and Ruth Zetek from Aneko Press for 6th-Adult in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV) $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)
	Selected Poems by Horace from Walter J. Black, Inc. for 7th-Adult in Walter J. Black Classics Club (Location: VIN-LITWJB) $4.00 (1 in stock)
	Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman, illustrated by Charles Mozley from Franklin Watts for 7th-12th grade in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC) $12.00 (1 in stock)
	Shropshire Lad The Living Library by A. E. Housman, Illustrated by Jeanne Edwards from World Publishing Company for 7th-12th grade in Vintage Poetry (Location: VIN-POET) $5.00 (1 in stock)
	Time Machine by H. G. Wells from Dover Publications for 7th-Adult in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19) $2.00 (1 in stock)
	Tom Sawyer Abroad and Other Stories by Mark Twain from Grosset & Dunlap for 7th-Adult in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC) $4.00 (1 in stock)
	Translations from the Chinese by Arthur Waley from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. for 6th-Adult in Vintage Poetry (Location: VIN-POET) $8.00 (1 in stock)
	Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Frances Brundage from Saalfield Publishing Co. for 4th-8th grade in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC) $6.00 (1 in stock)
	Treasure Island by Sir Robert Louis Stevenson from Signet Classics for 6th-Adult in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19) $3.00 (4 in stock)
	Walkabout by James Marshall reprint from Puffin Books for 6th-10th grade in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV) $4.00 (1 in stock)

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