Introduction
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment. It can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.
Literature, as an art form, can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoirs, letters, and essays. Within its broad definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles, or other written information on a particular subject. (Full article...)
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The Time Traveler's Wife is the debut novel of American author Audrey Niffenegger, published in 2003. It is a love story about a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel unpredictably, and about his wife, an artist, who has to cope with his frequent absences and dangerous experiences. Niffenegger, frustrated in love when she began the work, wrote the story as a metaphor for her failed relationships. The tale's central relationship came to her suddenly and subsequently supplied the novel's title. The novel, which has been classified as both science fiction and romance, examines issues of love, loss, and free will. In particular, it uses time travel to explore miscommunication and distance in relationships, while also investigating deeper existential questions.
As a first-time novelist, Niffenegger had trouble finding a literary agent. She eventually sent the novel to MacAdam/Cage unsolicited and, after an auction took place for the rights, Niffenegger selected them as her publishers. The book became a bestseller after an endorsement from author and family friend Scott Turow on The Today Show, and as of March 2009 had sold nearly 2.5 million copies in the United States and the United Kingdom. The novel won the Exclusive Books Boeke Prize and a British Book Award.
Selected excerpt
“ | When in 1892 I settled in Macao, a small island near the mouth of the Canton river, to practise medicine, I little dreamt that in four years time I should find myself a prisoner in the Chinese Legation in London, and the unwitting cause of a political sensation which culminated in the active interference of the British Government to procure my release. It was in that year however, and at Macao, that my first acquaintance was made with political life; and there began the part of my career which has been the means of bringing my name so prominently before the British people. | ” |
— Sun Yat-sen, Kidnapped in London |
More Did you know
- ... that Meralda Warren and several children on Pitcairn Island wrote the first book published in both English and Pitkern, a South Pacific creole language?
- ... that octogenarian poet Joyce La Mers donated $500,000 to Light Quarterly, the US's only literary magazine devoted to light verse?
- ... that the non-fiction book The Siege: The Attack on the Taj is set during the 2008 Mumbai attacks?
- ... that Lancelot de Carle, an eyewitness to the trial and execution of Anne Boleyn, wrote a poem detailing her life and the circumstances surrounding her death?
- ... that writer Hu Yepin was betrayed by rival communists, arrested by the British police, and executed by the Kuomintang?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/Nuvola_apps_filetypes.svg/47px-Nuvola_apps_filetypes.svg.png)
- ... that Bellman's song "Ge rum i Bröllopsgåln din hund!" describes "one of the wildest weddings in Swedish literature"?
- ... that the North-Western Regional Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) ran an underground network to distribute literature to German soldiers in occupied areas?
- ... that the bridge from which James Bond leapt in No Time to Die is actually an aqueduct?
- ... that despite a career writing queer literature, Chen Xue's 2019 novel Fatherless City had a "putatively straight premise"?
- ... that the Lviv branch of the Ukrderzhnatsmenvydav was the main publisher of Polish literature in the Soviet Union by 1941?
- ... that the exclusive secret society Hamilton House from the television show Gossip Girl was based on St. Anthony Hall, a social and literary fraternity?
Today in literature
- 1844 - Gerard Manley Hopkins, English poet born
- 1866 - Beatrix Potter, English author, famous for the illustrated storybooks about Peter Rabbit born
- 1909 - Malcolm Lowry, English novelist born
- 1927 - John Ashbery, American poet born
- 1945 - Jim Davis, American cartoonist, author of Garfield born
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