Representative Text and Authors in The World

REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS AND AUTHORS FROM ASIA, ANGLO-AMERICA, EUROPE, LATIN AMERICA, AND AFRICA
21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World
CONTENT
Literary genres, traditions and forms from different national literature and cultures, namely, Asian,
Anglo-American, European, Latin American, and African
CONTENT STANDARD
The learner will be able to understand and appreciate literary texts in various genres across
national literature and cultures.
PERFORMANCE STANDARD
The learner will be able todemonstrate understanding and appreciation of 21st century literature
of the world through:
1. a written close analysis and critical interpretation of a literary text in terms of form and
theme, with a description of its context derived from research;
LEARNING COMPETENCIES
Writing a close analysis and critical interpretation of literary texts, applying a reading approach,
and doing an adaptation of these, require from the learner the ability to:
1. identify representative texts and authors from Asia, North America, Europe, Latin America,
and Africa
21st Century Literature – all literary works written and published at the latter part of the 21st
century (from 2001 onwards). These works are often characterized as gender sensitive,
technologically alluding, culturally pluralistic, operates on the extreme reality or extreme fiction,
and questions conventions and supposedly absolute norms.
21st CENTURY ASIAN LITERATURE

1. Scheherazade (short story) by Haruki Murakami (Japan)
2. Their Last Visitor (sudden fiction) by Kim Young Ha (South Korea) translated by Dafna
Zur
3. The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God (short story) by Etgar Keret (Israel)
4. Elegy by Mong-Lan (Vietnam)
5. The Burning Kite by Ouyang Jianghe (China) translated b Austin Woerner
6. The Wheel by Vinda Karandikar (India)
7. Song by Ali Ahmad Said Esber (Syria) translated by Khaled Mattawa
REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS FROM ASIA
HARUKI MURAKAMI (January 12, 1949)

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer. His books and stories have been bestsellers in Japan as
well as internationally, with his work being translated into 50 languages and selling millions of
copies outside his native country. His work has received numerous awards, including the World
Fantasy Award, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, and
the Jerusalem Prize.
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YOUNG-HA KIM (November 11, 1968)

Young-ha Kim was born in Hwacheon. He moved from place to place as a child, since his father
was in the military. As a child, he suffered from gas poisoning from coal gas and lost memory
before ten. He was educated at Yonsei University in Seoul, majoring business administration, but
he didn't show much interest in it. Instead he focused on writing stories. Kim, after graduating
from Yonsei University in 1993, began his military service as an assistant detective at the military
police 51st Infantry Division near Suwon. His career as a professional writer started in 1995 right
after discharge.
ETGAR KERET (August 20, 1967)

Keret's first published work was Pipelines (‫צינורות‬, Tzinorot, 1992), a collection of short stories
which was largely ignored when it came out. His second book, Missing Kissinger (‫ר'לקיסינג געגועיי‬,
Ga'agu'ai le-Kissinger, 1994), a collection of fifty very short stories, caught the attention of the
general public. The short story "Siren", which deals with the paradoxes of modern Israeli society,
is included in the curriculum for the Israeli matriculation exam in literature.
MỘNG-LAN (March 25, 1970)

Mộng-Lan is a Vietnamese-born American award-winning poet, writer, painter, photographer,
musician, composer, singer, Argentine tango dancer, choreographer, and educator. Former
Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Fulbright Scholar, she has published seven books of poetry
& artwork, three chapbooks, has won numerous prizes such as the Juniper Prize and the Pushcart
Prize. Poems have been included in international and national anthologies such as Best American
Poetry Anthology and several Norton anthologies.
OUYANG JIANGHE (1956)

Ouyang Jianghe was born in Luzhou, Sichuan Province. He is a renowned Chinese poet, critic of
poetry and culture and calligrapher and is Director of the publication Today and a professor at
Beijing Normal University. Among his works published in the People’s Republic of China are 10
books of poetry - including Who Leaves and Who Stays, Such a learned hunger and Da shi da
fei - and his collection of reviews and essays Standing on This Side of Fabrication.
GOVIND VINAYAK KARANDIKAR (August 23, 1918 – March 14, 2010)

Govind Vināyak Karandikar better known as Vindā Karandikar, was a well-known Marathi writer.
In 2003, he was presented with the Jnanpith Award, which is India's one of the most prestigious
literary awards. He has also received for his literary work some other awards, including
Keshavasut Prize, Soviet Land Nehru Literary Award, Kabir Samman, and India's highest literary
award, for lifetime achievement, the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 1996.
ALI AHMAD SAID ESBER (January 1, 1930)

Ali Ahmad Said Esber , also known by the pen name Adonis or Adunis, is a Syrian poet, essayist
and translator who is considered one of the most influential and dominant Arab poets of the
modern era. He led a modernist revolution in the second half of the 20th century, "exerting a
seismic influence" on Arabic poetry comparable to T.S. Eliot's in the anglophone world.
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REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS FROM ASIA
SCHEHERAZADE
(Short Story) by Haruki Murakami (Japan)
Murakami has a new short story in the recent New Yorker (Oct. 13, 2014), the title of which,
"Scheherazade," immediately attracted my attention, having recently read the new translation of
1001 Nights by Hanan Al-Shakyh and Marina Warner's wonderful study, Stranger Magic:
Charmed States and the Arabian Nights.
Murakami's story is about a guy who cannot, for some undisclosed reason, leave his house. A
nameless woman is assigned (but we do not know by whom) to come to his house regularly to
bring him food and supplies. She also has sex with him and tells him stories; thus, he calls her
Scheherazade. The main story she tells him in the story we are reading is about her breaking into
the home of a boy with whom she was obsessed while in high school, (she is middle-aged now),
fantasizing about him, stealing trivial items, and leaving other items in their place.
THEIR LAST VISITOR

(sudden fiction) by Kim Young Ha (South Korea) translated by Dafna Zur
Yŏngsŏn was twenty-four. She had majored in sculpture at a prestigious art school, then married
Chŏngsu, a graduate of the same school, before the ink was dry on her diploma. It happened so
quickly that most of their friends thought the wedding invitations were a practical joke. She was
already working as a graphic designer at an Internet firm, and a friend had gotten Chŏngsu a job
as a set designer for a movie producer. Yŏngsŏn's small-scale start-up company kept her busy,
but Chŏngsu was even busier. He usually worked through the night. Movies were always
produced on a tight schedule. Chŏngsu basically lived with his tool belt on. He'd pound away for
days constructing an elaborate set only to bash it to pieces within hours. That was life: good work
went completely unnoticed while carelessness was criticized ruthlessly. He had to put up with a
lot of crap. Yŏngsŏn tended to think her husband's talents were going to waste, but she kept her
opinion to herself.
ELEGY
Mong-Lan (Vietnam)
& what if hope crashes through the door what if

that lasts a somersault?
hope for serendipity
even if a series of meals were all between us
even if the aeons lined up out
of order
what are years if not measured by trees
THE WHEEL
Vinda Karandikar (India)
Someone is about to come but doesn't. Is about
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to turn on the stairs but doesn't.

I button my shirt
come from the laundry with all its dazzling blots,
like one's peculiar fate.
I shut the door, sit quietly.
The fan begins to whirl
and turn the air into a whirlpool of fire,
making a noise bigger than the house.
Someone is about to come and doesn't.
It doesn't matter.
Calmly I lean against the wall,
become a wall.
SONG
by Ali Ahmad Said Esber (Syria) translated by Khaled Mattawa
Bells on our eyelashes

and the death throes of words,
and I among fields of speech,
a knight on a horse made of dirt.
My lungs are my poetry, my eyes a book,
and I, under the skin of words,
on the beaming banks of foam,
a poet who sang and died
leaving this singed elegy
before the faces of poets,
for birds at the edge of sky.
21st CENTURY ANGLO-AMERICAN LITERATURE

1. A History of Everything, Including You (sudden fiction) by Jenny Hollowell (United
States)
2. Chickens (microfiction) by Elaine Margarell (United States)
3. A Gentleman's C (microfiction) by Padgett Powell (United States)
4. One Today (poem) by Richard Blanco (United States)
5. We Ate the Children Last (science fiction) by Yann Martel (Canada)
6. The Right Sort (twitter story) by David Stephen Mitchell (United Kingdom)
7. One Night (elegy) by Ann Gray (United Kingdom)
ANGLO-AMERICA
Anglo-America (also referred to as Anglo-Saxon America) most often designates to a region in
the Americas in which English is a main language and British culture and the British Empire have
had significant historical, ethnic, linguistic and cultural impact. Anglo-America is distinct from Latin
America, a region of the Americas where Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese and French)
are prevalent. The term Anglo-America frequently refers specifically to the United States and
Canada, by far the two most populous English-speaking countries in North America.
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REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS FROM ANGLO-AMERICA
JENNY HOLLOWELL
Jenny Hollowell is an American novelist and short fiction writer, and a partner and executive
producer of music house and record label Ring The Alarm. Her debut novel Everything Lovely,
Effortless, Safe was published in 2010, leading her to be named one of the "best new writers" by
The Daily Beast. Hollowell received a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she
studied film and photography, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia,
where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Fiction and recipient of the Balch Short Story Award. Her
short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, Scheherezade, and the anthology New Sudden
Fiction, and was named a distinguished story by The Best American Short Stories.
PADGETT POWELL (April 25, 1952)

Padgett Powell is an American novelist in the Southern literary tradition. His debut novel, Edisto
(1984), was nominated for the American Book Award and was excerpted in The New Yorker.
Powell has written five more novels including A Woman Named Drown (1987), Edisto Revisited
(1996), a sequel to his debut, Mrs. Hollingsworth's Men (2000), The Interrogative Mood: A Novel?
(2009), and You & Me (2012), his most recent and three collections of short stories. In addition to
The New Yorker, Powell's work has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper's, Grand Street, Oxford
American, The New York Times Book Review, and other publications.
RICHARD BLANCO (February 15, 1968)

Richard Blanco was born in Madrid and immigrated to the United States as an infant with his
Cuban-exile family. He was raised in Miami and earned a BS in civil engineering and MFA in
creative writing from Florida International University. Blanco has been a practicing engineer,
writer, and poet since 1991. His collections of poetry include City of a Hundred Fires (1998), which
won the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize; Directions to the Beach of the Dead (2005), winner of the
PEN/American Beyond Margins Award; Looking for the Gulf Motel (2012), winner of the Thom
Gunn Award, the Maine Literary Award, and the Paterson Prize; One Today (2013); Boston
Strong (2013); and How to Love a Country (forthcoming 2019).
YANN MARTEL (June 25, 1963)

Yann Martel is a Spanish-born Canadian author best known for the Man Booker Prize-winning
novel Life of Pi, a number 1 international bestseller published in more than 50 territories. It has
sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and spent more than a year on the Bestseller Lists of
the New York Times and The Globe and Mail, among many other best-selling lists. It was adapted
to the screen and directed by Ang Lee, garnering four Oscars (the most for the event) including
Best Director and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.
DAVID STEPHEN MITCHELL (January 12, 1969)

An English author, he is known for such bestselling novels as number9dream and Cloud Atlas.
The latter work was made into a major motion picture. After completing his education, he taught
English in Japan for eight years and used his savings to finance his early writing career. Both his
early novel, Ghostwritten, and his later work, Cloud Atlas, consist of separate but interrelated
stories.
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ANN GRAY (May 4, 1946)

The author of a number of collections including Painting Skin (Fatchance Press, 1995) and The
Man I Was Promised (Headland, 2004), Ann was commended for the National Poetry Competition
2010 and won the Ballymaloe Poetry Prize in 2014. Her studies for an MA in Creative writing from
the University of Plymouth led to her collection of poems about the sudden loss of her partner, At
The Gate (Headland, 2008). ‘My Blue Hen’ is one of many written since that publication, which,
she says, “prove” she was not finished with those poems.
REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS ANGLO-AMERICA
A HISTORY OF EVERYTHING, INCLUDING YOU

(sudden fiction) by Jenny Hollowell (United States)
A History of Everything, Including You.” by Jenny Hollowell was overall very descriptive, so
descriptive one could imagine everything that she was speaking of. She started this story as a
very broad and simple statement of how Earth started and or created. As the story starts to
blossom one can tell that this story became more personal than the Earth being created. Jenny
starts to open up and goes on explaining what seems to be the most important events of her life
in a metaphorical way. Through descriptive sentences one can feel the emotional connection she
was having toward this writing. Also since Jenny is telling this story in first person everything
seems very personal at this point. Overall I loved this story and how open she seems to be with
her life events, from the beginning of time to the end of her life.
CHICKENS
(microfiction) by Elaine Margarell (United States)
Elaine Magarrell's "Chickens" relies upon the apparently ridiculous in order to raise very serious
questions. Both amusing and troubling by turns, the story introduces such devices as a "chicken
angel" to interrogate the value of religious faith and to raise ethical concerns about eating meat.
It exploits the fine line between probable opposites - such as laughter and sadness, absurdity and
profundity - to ask us to rethink the relationship between dinner and morality.
A GENTLEMAN’S C
(microfiction) by Padgett Powell (United States)
My father, trying to finally graduate from college at sixty-two, came, by curious circumstance, to
be enrolled in an English class I taught, and I was, perhaps, a bit tougher on him than I was on
the others. Hadn’t he been tougher on me than on other people’s kids growing up? I gave him a
hard, honest, low C. About what I felt he’d always given me.
We had a death in the family, and my mother and I traveled to the funeral. My father stayed put
to complete his exams–it was his final term. On the way home we learned that he had received
his grades, which were low enough in the aggregate to prevent him from graduating, and reading
this news on the dowdy sofa inside the front door, he leaned over as if to rest and had a heart
attack and died. For years I had thought that the old man’s passing away would not affect me, but
it did.
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ONE TODAY
(poem) by Richard Blanco (United States)
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,

peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, rescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise.
WE ATE THE CHILDREN LAST

(science fiction) by Yann Martel (Canada)
A man dying from intestinal cancer volunteers for an experimental treatment which involves
receiving the transplanted digestive system of a pig. The transplant is successful, but leaves him
with a pig-like penchant for consuming garbage. Considering this an acceptable trade-off for a
medical breakthrough, society initially accepts the widespread adoption of the technique, but
eventually collapses as the transplant recipients' insatiable appetites evolve into cannibalism.
THE RIGHT SORT

(twitter story) by David Stephen Mitchell (United Kingdom)
The short story The Right Sort, written by David Stephen Mitchell - author of the famous
novel Cloud Atlas - was posted to Twitter in a course of seven days. The story, which consists of
over 280 Tweets, generated some excitement when it first started out. However, later Tweets
received fewer and fewer Retweets and Likes. The idea for the project had come from Mitchell's
publisher and served as means to generate excitement about Mitchell's forthcoming novel The
Bone Clocks. Nevertheless, Mitchell turned the short story into a novel of its own called Slade
House, a year after publishing it on Twitter.
ONE NIGHT
(elegy) by Ann Gray (United Kingdom)
One night you’ll come back and I’ll wake
to see you moving noiselessly in your socks,
you’ll look bewildered, nothing’s quite the same.
You’ll be hunting through the drawers,
wondering where your clothes are.
I won’t move or speak, I’ll try not to breathe…
Carol Ann says: This comes from the Cornwall-based poet Ann Gray’s new collection At The Gate
(Headland, 2008) a powerfully moving sequence of elegies to her partner, who was killed in a car
accident. In this poem, the grief of bereavement re-imagines the lover as a Lazarus figure,
returning from the dead, puzzled and disconcerted at the small changes in the bedroom and the
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changing, ongoing lives of the living. The closing question is unbearably poignant, holding a
deeper, tragic meaning beneath its colloquial surface.
21st CENTURY CONTINENTAL EUROPEAN LITERATURE

1. Hazaran (short story) by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio (France), translated by Patricia
E. Frederick
2. Kiss (blog fiction) by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Spain)
3. The Red Fox Fur Coat (sudden fiction) by Teolinda Gersao (Portugal)
4. Blood of a Mole (sudden fiction) by Zdravka Evtimova (Bulgaria)
5. Atlantis - A Lost Sonnet (poem) by Eavan Boland (Ireland)
6. from "Late" (poem) by Gottfried Benn (Germany)
REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS FROM CONTINENTAL EUROPE
JEAN-MARIE GUSTAVE LE CLEZIO (April 13, 1940)

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, usually identified as J. M. G. Le Clézio, is a French writer and
professor. The author of over 40 works, he was awarded the 1963 Prix Renaudot for his novel Le
Procès-Verbal and the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature for his life's work, as an "author of new
departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the
reigning civilization".
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFÓN (September 25, 1964)

Ruiz Zafón was born in the City of Barcelona. Growing up in Spain, he began his working life by
making money in advertising. His grandparents had worked in a factory and his father sold
insurance. In the 1990s Ruiz Zafón moved to Los Angeles where he worked briefly in screen
writing. He is fluent in English. Ruiz Zafón's first novel, El Príncipe de la Niebla (The Prince of
Mist, 1993), earned the Edebé literary prize fosr young adult fiction. He is also the author of three
additional young adult novels, El palacio de la medianoche (1994), Las luces de septiembre
(1995) and Marina (1999). The English version of El Príncipe de la Niebla was published in 2010.
TEOLINDA GERSAO (January 30, 1940)

Teolinda Gersão is a Portuguese writer. Born in Coimbra, she studied at the Universities of
Coimbra, Tübingen and Berlin. She also taught at the Technical University of Berlin, Lisbon
University, and the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, among others. A full-time writer since the mid-
1990s, Gersao is the author of more than a dozen books. She has won several literary prizes for
her work. Her novel The Word Tree set in colonial Mozambique, was translated into English by
Margaret Jull Costa.
ZDRAVKA EVTIMOVA (July 24,1959)

Zdravka Evtimova (born in Pernik, Bulgaria) is a contemporary Bulgarian writer. She has four
short story collections and four novels published in Bulgarian. Her short stories have appeared in
many international literary journals. Some of her short story collections were translated into other
languages. As well as being an author, Zdravka works as a literary translator from English, French
and German. Zdravka Evtimova has translated more than 25 novels by English, American and
Canadian authors into Bulgarian language. She translates the work of Bulgarian writers into
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English and is a member of the Bulgarian Writers' Union and the Writers' League in UK, Yorkshire-
Humbers
EAVAN BOLAND (September 24, 1944)

Eavan Boland is an Irish poet, author, and professor. She is currently a professor at Stanford
University, where she has taught since 1996. Her work deals with the Irish national identity, and
the role of women in Irish history. A number of poems from Boland's poetry career are studied by
Irish students who take the Leaving Certificate. She is a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award
for Poetry. Eavan Boland's first book of poetry was New Territory published in 1967 with Dublin
publisher Allen Figgis. This was followed by The War Horse (1975), In Her Own Image (1980)
and Night Feed (1982), which established her reputation as a writer on the ordinary lives of women
and on the difficulties faced by women poets in a male-dominated literary world.
GOTTFRIED BENN (May 2, 1886 – July 7, 1956)

Gottfried Benn was a German poet, essayist, and physician. He was nominated for the Nobel
Prize in Literature five times. He began his literary career as a poet when he published a booklet
titled Morgue and other Poems in 1912, containing expressionist poems dealing with physical
decay of flesh, with blood, cancer, and death. Benn's poetry projects an introverted nihilism, that
is, an existentialist outlook that views artistic expression as the only purposeful action. In his early
poems Benn used his medical experience, often using medical terminology, to portray humanity
morbidly as just another species of disease-ridden animal.
REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS FROM CONTINENTAL EUROPE
HAZARAN
(short story) by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio (France),
translated by Patricia E. Frederick
In the story "Hazaran" draws upon the genre of the fairy tale are the motifs of the quest; the
obstacle; the test, the supernatural assistance offered the hero or heroine; and the transformation
of the hero or heroine who passes from a state of deprivation to a state.
In "Hazaran" these traditional element to structure a parable of modern life. Modern fairy tale is
given a realistic setting. Resident of a shanty town of immigrants on the outskirts of a modern city,
the heroine alia is a victim of capitalist exploitation. Her encounter with Martin the supernatural
agent will transform her life by showing her the path to spiritual happiness. At the same time,
Martin will transform the life if the entire community.
The name "Hazaran" has at least three meaning in his story;It refers to the story we are reading;
it is the name of the fairy tale that Martin tells the children; it is the name of fabulous country of
the birds in that story
KISS
(blog fiction) by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Spain)
“I never told anybody, but getting that apartment was nothing short of a miracle. All I knew
about Laura was that she worked part-time at the offices of the landlord on the first floor, and that
she kissed like a tango. I met her on a July night when the skies blanketing Barcelona sizzled with
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steam and desperation. I had been sleeping on a bench in a nearby square when I was awakened
by the brush of her lips…”
THE RED FOX FUR COAT

(sudden fiction) by Teolinda Gersao (Portugal)
“The Red Fox Fur Coat” by Teolinda Gersão starts off with a bank clerk (I’m gonna call her Sheila
for the rest of this presentation because I like that more than “the bank clerk”) making her way
home one day after work. She walks by a furrier’s shop and is immediately entranced with a red
fox fur coat. But the shop is closed, so she eagerly waits until the next morning to try it on. The
saleswoman remarks that the coat could have been made for Sheila. Unfortunately, the price is
five times what she can afford, but the saleswoman says that she can spread out the payments.
She quickly decides to work over the holidays so she can buy the coat.
BLOOD OF A MOLE
(sudden fiction) by Zdravka Evtimova (Bulgaria)
It’s about a nameless character who runs a pet shop. Barely anyone ever came in and bought
anything, until a strange lady, featuring mole-like tenancies, comes in asking for the blood of a
mole. She claimed 3 drops of it would cure her son’s illness. The pet shop owner didn’t have
moles, but felt awful, so he/she (never specified) slipped into the back room and slit his/her wrist.
The old lady came back days later saying her son could walk again.
Fast forward to a few days later and a man comes in claiming that he needs three drops of mole’s
blood so that he could save his dying wife. He took blood from the pet shop owner’s wrist as
well and left. Finally, the next day, a mob of people waited by the pet shop, all wanting mole’s
blood, all clutching little glass bottles, and knives.
ATLANTIS - A LOST SONNET

(poem) by Eavan Boland (Ireland)
How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder

that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades,
not to mention vehicles and animals—had all
one fine day gone under?
I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city —
white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe
what really happened is
this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of
where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it
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Paraphrase: The author begins by wondering how an entire city could have suddenly
disappeared underwater. Then he relates this to his old city, and describes some of the features
he remembers most. Lastly, he gives a possible explanation for how the city disappeared: it was
just a story made up to help others emphasize the sorrows of losing something forever.
Connotation: This poem has an extended metaphor that compares the lost city of Atlantis to the
sorrows of people. I think the author is trying to portray how it’s sad to come to the realization that
memoires in the past are gone forever.
21st CENTURY LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE

1. Like Hercules (microstory) by Ana Maria Shua (Argentina) translated by Steven J.
Stewart
2. Honey (flash fiction) by Antonio Utgar (Columbia) translated by Katherine Silver
3. Essential Things (sudden fiction) by Jorge Luis Arzola (Cuba)
4. You Didn't Know (poem) by Idea Vilarino (Uruguay) translated by Jesse Lee Kercheval
5. The Desert of Atacama V (poem) by Raul Zurita (Chile) translated by Anna Deeny
6. To Those Who Have Lost Everything (poem) by Francisco X. Alarcon (Mexico)
REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS FROM LATIN AMERICA
ANA MARIA SHUA (April 22, 1951)

Ana María Shua (born in Buenos Aires) is an Argentine writer who has published over eighty
books in numerous genres including: novels, short stories, micro fiction, poetry, drama, children's
literature, books of humor and Jewish folklore, anthologies, film scripts, journalistic articles, and
essays. Her writing has been translated into many languages, including English, French, German,
Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Korean, Japanese, Bulgarian, and Serbian. Her stories
appear in anthologies throughout the world. She has received numerous national and
international awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is one of Argentina’s premier living
writers. She is particularly known in the Spanish-speaking world on both sides of the Atlantic as
“the Queen of the Microstory.
ANTONIO UTGAR (1974)

Antonio Ungar (born in Bogotá, Colombia) a globetrotter, he has lived in Mexico, Spain, and the
United Kingdom, and is currently based in Palestine-Israel. He devotes part of his time to writing
non-fiction about his home country, Colombia, as well as the Middle East, and was granted the
Colombian National Journalism Award in 2005. He has published two short story collections,
Trece circos comunes (Thirteen Ordinary Circuses, 1999) and De ciertos animals tristes (Of
Certain Sad Animals, 2000), as well as other stories which have appeared in international literary
magazines and more than twenty-five anthologies. Ungar has also tried his hand at longer
narrative forms: his novel Zanahorias voladoras (Flying Carrots) was published in 2004, followed
by Tres ataúdes blancos (Three White Coffins), which won the Herralde Prize in 2010 and was
shortlisted for the Rómulo Gallegos Award in 2011.
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JORGE LUIS ARZOLA (1966)

Jorge Luis Arzola was born in Jatibonico, Cuba. Unlike those authors who have up to now shaped
the image of Cuban literature, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Miguel Barnet, Jesús Díaz and Reinaldo
Arenas, Arzola belongs to a new generation of writers, the so-called “novísimos“. This generation
is on the one hand influenced more than the preceeding one by the new awareness of national
identity which has resulted following the Cuban revolution, and on the other hand, following the
political and economic crisis facing the country after the fall of the Iron Curtain, it questions these
ideals.
RAÚL ZURITA (January 10, 1950)

Raúl Zurita Canessa is a Chilean poet. He won the Chilean National Prize for Literature in 2000.
Zurita spent four years earning his living as a computer salesman during a period of financial
hardship. At the same time he was a guest reader at the Faculty of Philosophy at the Universidad
de Chile in Santiago, where he met writers and intellectuals such as Nicanor Parra, Ronald Kay,
Christian Hunneus and Enrique Lihn. The first of his poems to be published appeared in 1975 in
"Manuscritos", the Philosophy Faculty's publication. Four years later "Purgatorio" was published,
the first part of a poetic trilogy which Zurita would not conclude for another fourteen years. The
book became a huge success.
FRANCISCO XAVIER ALARCÓN (February 21, 1954 – January 15, 2016)

Francisco Xavier Alarcón was a Chicano poet and educator. He was one of the few Chicano poets
to have "gained recognition while writing mostly in Spanish" within the United States. His poems
have been also translated into Irish and Swedish. He made many guest appearances at public
schools so that he could help inspire and influence young people to write their own poetry
especially because he felt that children are "natural poet.“ Alarcón wrote poetry in English,
Spanish and Nahuatl, often presented to the reader in a bilingual format. His poetry is considered
minimalist in style.
REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS FROM LATIN AMERICA
LIKE HERCULES
(microstory) by Ana Maria Shua (Argentina)
translated by Steven J. Stewart
Yŏngsŏn was twenty-four. She had majored in sculpture at a prestigious art school, then married
Chŏngsu, a graduate of the same school, before the ink was dry on her diploma. It happened so
quickly that most of their friends thought the wedding invitations were a practical joke. She was
already working as a graphic designer at an Internet firm, and a friend had gotten Chŏngsu a job
as a set designer for a movie producer. Yŏngsŏn's small-scale start-up company kept her busy,
but Chŏngsu was even busier. He usually worked through the night. Movies were always
produced on a tight schedule. Chŏngsu basically lived with his tool belt on. He'd pound away for
days constructing an elaborate set only to bash it to pieces within hours. That was life: good work
went completely unnoticed while carelessness was criticized ruthlessly. He had to put up with a
lot of crap. Yŏngsŏn tended to think her husband's talents were going to waste, but she kept her
opinion to herself.
12
HONEY
(flash fiction) by Antonio Utgar (Columbia)
translated by Katherine Silver
From Colombia comes the story “Honey” by Antonio Ungar in which a young boy watches his
sister cover herself with honey: “she defies the world, she smiles and waits. Little by little her body
begins to transform getting thicker and darker.” Suspense builds from the first sentence to the
end of the story. A character fascinated by someone in peril, wrought in beautiful prose, reminds
the reader of accidents along a freeway and rubberneckers cruising by, the universality of human
curiosity.
ESSENTIAL THINGS
(sudden fiction) by Jorge Luis Arzola (Cuba)
A man recalls the time he and two friends ran away from their village to sail across the sea to
freedom.
I’m trying very hard to think of a single thing I enjoyed in this story. Honestly, there is nothing. The
story is no more than a collection of incoherent memories – which may or not be true – that does
nothing more than bore me. An essential thing this story is not.
YOU DIDN'T KNOW

(poem) by Idea Vilarino (Uruguay)
translated by Jesse Lee Kercheval
My poor love
you believed
that it was so
you didn’t know.
It was richer than that
it was poorer than that
it was life and you
with your eyes closed
you saw your nightmares
and you called that
life.
THE DESET OF ATACAMA V

(poem) by Rail Zurita (Chile) translated by Anna Deeny
Speak of the whistle of Atacama

the wind erases like snow
the color of that plain
i. The Desert of Atacama soared over infinities of
deserts to be there
ii. Like the wind feel it pass whistling through the
leaves of the trees
13
iii. Look at it become transparent faraway and just

accompanied by the wind
iv. But be careful: because if ultimately the Desert

of Atacama where not where it should be the
whole world would begin to whistle through the
leaves of the trees and when we'd see ourselves
in the same never transparent whistles
in the wind swallowing the color of this pampa
TO THOSE WHO HAVE LOST EVERYTHING

(poem) by Francisco X. Alarcon (Mexico)
All of the unattributed lines in this remembrance come from Alarcón’s poem, To Those Who
Have Lost Everything. Francisco X. Alarcón is survived by his partner of over two decades,
Javier Pinzón, who he was only allowed to marry during the California legal window for gay
marriage in 2008, as well as his mother, two sisters, four brothers, nine nieces and nephews
and the many students fortunate enough to have his classes at the Santa Cruz and Davis
campuses of the University of California.
21st CENTURY AFRICAN LITERATURE

1. As a Woman Grows Older by J.M Coetzee (South Africa)
2. Honey (flash fiction) by Antonio Utgar (Columbia) translated by Katherine Silver
3. Poison (science fiction) by Henrietta Rose-Innes (South Africa)
4. Hyde Park (creative non fiction) by Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe)
5. You Didn't Know (poem) by Idea Vilarino (Uruguay) translated by Jesse Lee Kercheval
6. The First Circle (poem) by Kofi Awoonor (Ghana)
7. Tonight (poem) by Ladan Osman (Somalia)
REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS FROM AFRICA
J. M. COETZEE (February 9, 1940)

John Maxwell Coetzee is a South African-born novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient
of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He has also won the Booker Prize twice, the Jerusalem
Prize, CNA Prize (thrice), the Prix Femina étranger, The Irish Times International Fiction Prize as
well as other awards and honors, holds a number of honorary doctorates and is one of the most
acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language. He relocated to Australia in 2002 and
lives in Adelaide. He became an Australian citizen in 2006.
HENRIETTA ROSE-INNES (September 14, 1971)

Henrietta Rose-Innes is a South African novelist and short-story writer. She was the 2008 winner
of the Caine Prize for African Writing for her speculative-fiction story "Poison". Her novel Nineveh
was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Prize for Fiction and the M-Net Literary Awards. In
September of that year her story "Sanctuary" was awarded second place in the 2012 BBC
(Inter)national Short Story Award.
14
PETINA GAPPAH (1971)

Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean lawyer and writer. She writes in English, though she also draws
on Shona, her first language. She is currently based in Berlin, where she has a DAAD Artist-in-
Residence fellowship. In 2016, she was named African Literary Person of the Year by Brittle
Paper. Gappah's first book, An Elegy for Easterly, a story collection that she says is "about what
it has meant to be a Zimbabwean in recent times", was published by Faber and Faber in April
2009 in the United Kingdom and in June 2009 in the United States.
IDEA VILARINO (August 18, 1920 – April 28, 2009)

Idea Vilariño Romani was a Uruguayan poet, essayist and literary critic. She belonged to the
group of intellectuals known as "Generación del 45." In this generation, there are several writers
such as Juan Carlos Onetti, Mario Benedetti, Sarandy Cabrera, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Ángel
Rama, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Maggi, Alfredo Gravina, Mario Arregui, Amanda Berenguer,
Humberto Megget, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Gladys Castelvecchi and José Pedro Díaz among
others. She also worked as a translator, composer and lecturer.
KOFI AWOONOR (1935 – September 21, 2013)

Kofi Awoonor was a Ghanaian poet and author whose work combined the poetic traditions of his
native Ewe people and contemporary and religious symbolism to depict Africa during
decolonization. He started writing under the name George Awoonor-Williams, and was also
published as Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor. He taught African literature at the University of Ghana.
Professor Awoonor was among those who were killed in the September 2013 attack at Westgate
shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, where he was a participant at the Storymoja Hay Festival.
LADAN OSMAN
Ladan Osman is a Somali-American poet and teacher. Her poetry is centered on her Somali and
Muslim heritage, and has been published in a number of prominent literary magazines. In
February 2014, Osman was named the winner of the annual Sillerman First Book Prize for African
Poets for her collection The Kitchen Dweller's Testimony. The $1000 award was accompanied by
the publication of her poetry anthology by the University of Nebraska Press in conjunction with
Amalion Press.
REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS FROM AFRICA
AS A WOMAN GROWS OLDER

(short story) by J.M. Coetzee (South Africa)
She is visiting her daughter in Nice, her first visit there in years. Her son will fly out from the United
States to spend a few days with them, on the way to some conference or other. It interests her,
this confluence of dates. She wonders whether there has not been some collusion, whether the
two of them do not have some plan, some proposal to put to her of the kind that children put to a
parent when they feel she can no longer look after herself. So obstinate, they will have said to
each other: so obstinate, so stubborn, so self-willed—how will we get past that obstinacy of hers
except by working together?
15
POISON
(science fiction) by Henrietta Rose-Innes (South Africa)
Henrietta Rose-Innes’ short story ‘Poison’ (from Homing 2010) is set in the aftermath of a chemical
explosion of cataclysmic proportions in Cape Town. The story's protagonist and narrator, Lynn, is
among the last to flee the city; she ends up alone at an abandoned highway petrol station. She
sips Coke and eats crisps and waits passively – for a rescue team, for the will to try and escape,
or for the (presumably) inevitable end. The story provides us with some clues as to her lack of
motivation, although she remains enigmatic.
HYDE PARK
(creative non-fiction) by Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe)
I was a student when I made my first visit to London. It was the summer of 1997, I was poor and
on a budget. I came just for the day, on a National Express coach from Cambridge. I was a little
uneasy because the driver spoke loudly in a cockney accent, had a shaven head and tattoos that
snaked up his arms from his wrists and disappeared into his short sleeves. Dark thoughts of what
skinheads did to black people in Europe entered my mind. “Here you go darlin’,” he said as he
handed me my change. I was disarmed.
THE FIRST CIRCLE

(poem) by Kofi Awoonor (Ghana)
1.
the flat end of sorrow here
two crows fighting over New Year's Party
leftovers. From my cell, I see a cold
hard world.
2.
So this is the abscess that
hurts the nation—
jails, torture, blood
and hunger.
One day it will burst;
it must burst.
3.
When I heard you were taken
we speculated, those of us at large
where you would be
in what nightmare will you star?
That night I heard the moans
wondering whose child could now
be lost in the cellars of oppression.
Then you emerged, tall, and bloody-eyed.
It was the first time
I wept..
16
TONIGHT
Tonight is a drunk man,
his dirty shirt.
There is no couple chatting by the recycling bins,

offering to help me unload my plastics.
There is not even the black and white cat
that balances elegantly on the lip of the dumpster.
There is only the smell of sour breath. Sweat on the collar of my shirt.
A water bottle rolling under a car.
Me in my too-small pajama pants stacking juice jugs on neighbors’ juice jugs.
I look to see if there is someone drinking on their balcony.
I tell myself I will wave.
17
LINKS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_century
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2014/1006/A-short-story-by-Haruki-
Murakami-is-published-in-the-New-Yorker
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23312593-scheherazade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheherazade
http://may-on-the-short-story.blogspot.com/2014/10/haruki-murakamis-scheherazade-sex-
and.html
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253598/summary
https://muse.jhu.edu/https://www.academia.edu/525540/An_Interview_with_Kim_Young-
ha/253598/summary
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57610/elegy-56d23b4ac3983
https://www.merriam-webster.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegy
http://www.literarydevices.com/elegy/
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49803/the-wheel
https://diverseuniteculture.wordpress.com/2018/12/03/the-wheel/
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/song-260/
https://jeniferrxo.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/a-history-of-everything-including-you/
https://www.k-state.edu/english/nelp/engl.s00/sample_essay.magarrell.html
https://biblioklept.org/2010/11/26/a-gentlemans-c-padgett-powell/
https://poets.org/poem/one-today
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/14/the-right-sort-david-mitchells-twitter-short-story
https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/staying-in/poetry-corner---one-night-423461
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._G._Le_Cl%C3%A9zio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ruiz_Zaf%C3%B3n
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teolinda_Gers%C3%A3o
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zdravka_Evtimova
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eavan_Boland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Benn
https://prezi.com/p/fhzc7pvhjnzv/hazaran/
https://www.randomhouse.com/ddpg/feature/zafon/short-story.php
https://thepvacreativewritingreview.wordpress.com/2017/10/19/the-red-fox-fur-coat-write-up-by-
evan-sherer/
https://literative.com/literary-analysis/story-symbolism-blood-by-zdravka-evtimova/
https://poets.org/poem/atlantis-lost-sonnet
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/53048/late-56d232029064d
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana_Mar%C3%ADa_Shua
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/fiction/antonio-ungar-the-ears-of-the-wolf/
http://www.literaturfestival.com/autoren-en/autoren-2003-en/jorge-luis-arzola
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%BAl_Zurita
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_X._Alarc%C3%B3n
http://blog.bartlebysnopes.com/flashy-world-flash-fiction-international-short-stories-around-
world-review/
http://ayearofstoriespirate.blogspot.com/2009/07/july-13-essential-things.html
18
https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/poetry/four-poems-idea-vilarino
http://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-desert-of-atacama-v-raul-zurita.html
https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/code-switching-s-loss-chicano-poet-francisco-
x-alarc%C3%B3n-walks-on-UOoMKJ3poUCPVRqm1IsonQ/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._Coetzee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Rose-Innes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petina_Gappah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea_Vilari%C3%B1o
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kofi_Awoonor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladan_Osman
https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C529388
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00138398.2015.1045161
https://lannan.georgetown.edu/past-guests/henrietta-rose-innes/
https://www.ft.com/content/66b35a7a-30b3-11e5-8873-775ba7c2ea3d
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57142/the-first-circle
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54901/tonight-56d235cf37a3f
19

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REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS AND AUTHORS FROM ASIA, ANGLO-AMERICA, EUROPE, LATIN AMERICA, AND AFRICA

21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World

21st CENTURY ASIAN LITERATURE

REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS FROM ASIA

HARUKI MURAKAMI (January 12, 1949)

YOUNG-HA KIM (November 11, 1968)

ETGAR KERET (August 20, 1967)

MỘNG-LAN (March 25, 1970)

OUYANG JIANGHE (1956)

GOVIND VINAYAK KARANDIKAR (August 23, 1918 – March 14, 2010)

ALI AHMAD SAID ESBER (January 1, 1930)

REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS FROM ASIA

THEIR LAST VISITOR

& what if hope crashes through the door what if

Someone is about to come but doesn't. Is about

to turn on the stairs but doesn't.

Bells on our eyelashes

21st CENTURY ANGLO-AMERICAN LITERATURE

REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS FROM ANGLO-AMERICA

PADGETT POWELL (April 25, 1952)

RICHARD BLANCO (February 15, 1968)

YANN MARTEL (June 25, 1963)

DAVID STEPHEN MITCHELL (January 12, 1969)

ANN GRAY (May 4, 1946)

REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS ANGLO-AMERICA

A HISTORY OF EVERYTHING, INCLUDING YOU

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,

WE ATE THE CHILDREN LAST

THE RIGHT SORT

21st CENTURY CONTINENTAL EUROPEAN LITERATURE

REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS FROM CONTINENTAL EUROPE

JEAN-MARIE GUSTAVE LE CLEZIO (April 13, 1940)

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFÓN (September 25, 1964)

TEOLINDA GERSAO (January 30, 1940)

ZDRAVKA EVTIMOVA (July 24,1959)

EAVAN BOLAND (September 24, 1944)

GOTTFRIED BENN (May 2, 1886 – July 7, 1956)

REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS FROM CONTINENTAL EUROPE

THE RED FOX FUR COAT

ATLANTIS - A LOST SONNET

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder

21st CENTURY LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE

REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS FROM LATIN AMERICA

ANA MARIA SHUA (April 22, 1951)

ANTONIO UTGAR (1974)

JORGE LUIS ARZOLA (1966)

RAÚL ZURITA (January 10, 1950)

FRANCISCO XAVIER ALARCÓN (February 21, 1954 – January 15, 2016)

REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS FROM LATIN AMERICA

YOU DIDN'T KNOW

THE DESET OF ATACAMA V

Speak of the whistle of Atacama

iii. Look at it become transparent faraway and just

iv. But be careful: because if ultimately the Desert

TO THOSE WHO HAVE LOST EVERYTHING

21st CENTURY AFRICAN LITERATURE

REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS FROM AFRICA

J. M. COETZEE (February 9, 1940)

HENRIETTA ROSE-INNES (September 14, 1971)

PETINA GAPPAH (1971)

IDEA VILARINO (August 18, 1920 – April 28, 2009)

KOFI AWOONOR (1935 – September 21, 2013)

REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS FROM AFRICA