Set Texts 2024-25

The following texts are required for the 2024-25 year. These can be purchased online (hard-copy or digital format is fine). See the links on the syllabus page for online purchasing options. Alternatively, the library will have limited copies of the set texts available to borrow; in many cases, it also provides access to e-copies of the set texts. Several of the shorter primary texts (those not listed below) will be available as online reading -- see the links on the syllabus page.

If possible, please try to get the Oxford, Penguin and Faber editions listed below so that seminars are able to share common page references; with translated texts, such as Faust, Kokoro and The Hour of the Star, this is particularly important. The Dover editions are included for the sake of economy, but you’re welcome to get other editions of these texts.

Please remember to bring your copy of the week’s assigned reading to both lectures and seminars.

Johann von Goethe, Faust Part I, trans. David Luke (Oxford World’s Classics)

Olaudah Equiano, Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, African (Dover Thrift)

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein [1818 Text] (Norton Critical Editions)

Henryk Ibsen, A Doll’s House (Four Major Plays, Oxford World’s Classics)

Natsume Soseki, Kokoro, trans. Meredith McKinney (Penguin Classics)

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Penguin Popular or Penguin Classics)

Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World, trans. Surendranath Tagore (Penguin Classics)

Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis, trans. Susan Bernofsky (Norton)

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes (Penguin or Virago)

Silvina Ocampo, "The Impostor" in The Impostor and Other Stories, trans. Daniel Balderston (Serpents Tail)

Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children, trans. Ralph Manheim (Penguin Classics or Methuen)

Ayi Kweh Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (Heinemann)

Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star (Penguin Classics)

Michelle Cliff, No Telephone to Heaven (Penguin)

Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis (Vintage)

It’s also desirable, but not required, to have copies of the following useful background texts:

Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Penguin)

Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: Europe, 1789-1848 (Abacus)

—, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 (Abacus)

—, The Age of Empire, 1875-1914 (Abacus)

—, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991 (Abacus)