Literature

The ideas of a French philosopher provided the great Egyptian novelist with a way of assessing the good and the bad in his nation’s past.

The son of a country whose history had been written by outsiders, Chinua Achebe recognised the need for African literature with a Nigerian voice.

Witnessing the slow decline of his native Sicily, the last Prince of Lampedusa saw both blame and possible salvation in the island’s unique location and history, writes Alexander Lee.

The survival of a recently discovered song by the early Greek poet is little short of a miracle, says David Gribble. How was it discovered and what does it add to our picture of a complex and elusive figure?

Is reality simply a collection of unconnected moments and impressions? If so, what does it mean for our understanding of the past? For one Argentine writer, fiction was the perfect place to explore such questions.

As the holders of both our cultural and personal memories, books seem sacred and their destruction, no matter the cause, is always shocking.

The Booker Prize-winning writer eschewed autobiographical novels for historical fiction in a bid to resolve the porous distinction between objective and subjective history, writes Alexander Lee.

The author was born on 28 July 1866.

The satirical magazine appeared on July 17th, 1841.