Truong’s second novel, Bitter in the Mouth, expands the region and the meaning of “the South” in contemporary literature.

Though often associated with Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, “stream of consciousness” novels spilled first from the pen of British modernist Dorothy Richardson.

Film scholar Sylvia Shin Huey Chong offers a feminist reflection on the theme of rape in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Sympathizer.

Twentieth-century novels helped readers to learn about the practicalities of abortion as well as the social and moral questions around the procedure.

In addition to a New Wave hit, Nell Dunn's 1963 book about young women in a poor London neighborhood inspired a Ken Loach adaption that helped shift British attitudes toward abortion.

Lasselle’s 1850s novels were the first to examine the entanglements of society and politics—including lobbying—in Washington, DC.

The first-generation Jewish American novelist exposed entrenched prejudices of her day. A reissue of The Girls introduces her wit to new readers.

Revolving around student life, campus novels present a microcosm of the outside world, staged far from the humdrum of middle-class realities.

This year marks the centennial of the publication of E. E. Cummings’s novel based on his imprisonment in France during World War I. 

The rise of popular literature for children put a story, a role model, and a set of values in a young boy’s pocket.