Contexts of British Prose After 1925 - AP English Literature and Composition

The only one of these novels not set in a fictional dystopia is James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, an incredibly experimental work that vaguely follows various characters through a dreamlike, nebulous plot.

Only Zadie Smith’s White Teeth has not won the Booker Prize. Anne Enright’s The Gathering won in 2007, Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries won in 2013, Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North won in 2014, and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss won in 2006.

The ancient Greek historian Plutarch as well as the Roman historian Suetonius provided much of the background material for I, Claudius (1934). None of the others writers would have had information about Emperor Claudius, since he was not born until after their deaths.

I, Claudius was published in 1934.

All of the above figures were contemporaries of the Emperor Claudius (10 BCE to 54 CE) except for Homer (c.800 BCE to c.750 BCE).

Atonement (2001) is Ian McEwan’s eighth novel.

Kazuo Ishiguro is the author of A Pale View of Hills (1982), Martin Amis is the author of Dead Babies (1975), Julian Barnes is the author of Arthur and George (2005), and Pat Barker is the author of the Regeneration Trilogy (1991, 1993, 1995).

Ian McEwan's Atonement was published in 2001, the same year that it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Ian McEwan's Atonement is set partly in 1935 and partly in present-day England, but a significant portion of the action occurs during World War II in both France and England.

The Sense of an Ending is a 2011 novel by Julian Barnes. Enduring Love (1997), Saturday (2005), Solar (2010), and The Cement Garden (1978) are all by Ian McEwan.

Brideshead Revisited (1945) is Evelyn Waugh’s most famous novel and the work he considered his magnum opus.

Kingsley Amis wrote Lucky Jim (1954), Graham Greene wrote The Third Man (1950), Ian McEwan wrote Solar (2010), and D.H Lawrence wrote Sons and Lovers (1913).

Brideshead Revisited was written after the author’s parachute accident in 1943 and was published in 1945.

Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (1945) begins in the 1920s in Britain and concludes in the late 1940s, shortly after the end of World War II.

Decline and Fall (1928), A Handful of Dust (1934), Scoop (1938), and The Loved One (1948) are all by Evelyn Waugh. The Quiet American is a 1955 novel by the English author Graham Greene.

Orwell’s famous Animal Farm uses pigs, horses, dogs, and other animals to allegorize the 1917 Russian Revolution and subsequent rise of communism. In the novel, specific animals such as Napoleon and Snowball stand in for major political figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Leon Trotsky.

Considered one of the best works of English historical fiction in the last century, Mantel’s trilogy is set during the English Reformation and follows the rise of the Church of England and the machinations of historical characters such as Thomas Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, Cardinal Wolsey, and Henry VIII.

The novel, written by Virginia Woolf in 1927, is a classic example of modernist stream-of-consciousness. Although the plot centers around a family’s vacations to a Scottish island, it is much more concerned with consciousness, emotions, and perceptions than with fast-paced action or plot.

This author is Salman Rushdie, whose other works include Midnight’s Children and The Moor's Last Sigh. Rushdie’s work is known for its frequent use of magical realism, Indian settings, and historical subject matter. In 1989, Iran called for Rushdie’s assassination in response to the author’s portrayal of Islam in his writing.

Set in the fictional and futuristic World State dictatorship, Huxley’s novel is darkly dystopian and concerns a society where natural reproduction no longer occurs. Instead, babies are grown in scientific labs and separated into artificial castes, where they are conditioned and raised to have only a certain level of intelligence. The novel centers on the relationship between two characters, Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx, and the various ways in which they defy societal expectations and rules. The only subject not covered in this novel is gender identity.

The author is Pat Barker, and the novels are Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road. The works concern the lives and mental illnesses of several English soldiers (including Sassoon and Owen) in a psychiatric hospital during World War I.