Nasreddin or Nasreddin Hodja (1208–1285) is a character in the folklore of the Muslim world from the Balkans to China, and a hero of humorous short stories and satirical anecdotes. There are frequent statements about his existence in real life and even archaeological evidence in specific places, for example, a tombstone in the city of Akşehir, Turkey. At the moment, there is no confirmed information or serious grounds to talk about the specific date or place of Nasreddin's birth, so the question of the reality of his existence remains open.
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, and the Sicilian School of poets who surrounded him then spread the form to the mainland. The earliest sonnets, however, no longer survive in the original Sicilian language, but only after being translated into Tuscan dialect.
The Stranger, also published in English as The Outsider, is a 1942 novella written by French author Albert Camus. The first of Camus's novels published in his lifetime, the story follows Meursault, an indifferent settler in French Algeria, who, weeks after his mother's funeral, kills an unnamed Arab man in Algiers. The story is divided into two parts, presenting Meursault's first-person narrative before and after the killing.
Oulipo is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works using constrained writing techniques. It was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. Other notable members have included novelists Georges Perec and Italo Calvino, poets Oskar Pastior and Jean Lescure, and poet/mathematician Jacques Roubaud.
Raymond Queneau was a French novelist, poet, critic, editor and co-founder and president of Oulipo, notable for his wit and cynical humour.
"Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.
Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright, poet, and novelist who was a key figure in the Spanish Golden Age (1492–1659) of Baroque literature. In the literature of Spain, Lope de Vega is second to Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes said that Lope de Vega was “The Phoenix of Wits” and “Monster of Nature”
Barbara Winifred Wright was an English translator of modern French literature.
"Three Billy Goats Gruff" is a Norwegian fairy tale collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in their Norske Folkeeventyr, first published between 1841 and 1844. It has an Aarne-Thompson type of 122E. The first version of the story in English appeared in George Webbe Dasent's translation of some of the Norske Folkeeventyr, published as Popular Tales from the Norse in 1859. The heroes of the tale are three male goats who need to outsmart a ravenous troll named Phalanx to cross the bridge to their feeding ground.
Göran Tunström was a Swedish author. He grew up in Sunne, Värmland County. Tunström's style is personal and intimate, and has a clear autobiographical tone. Although active as an established author for nearly four decades, it was particularly after his Juloratoriet was adapted as a movie in 1996 that he became widely known to the (Swedish) public. He participated in the Oslo International Poetry Festival.
Trina Schart Hyman was an American illustrator of children's books. She illustrated over 150 books, including fairy tales and Arthurian legends. She won the 1985 Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration, recognizing Saint George and the Dragon, retold by Margaret Hodges.
Sergio Frusoni was a poet and promoter of the Cape Verdean Creole language.
Christian poetry is any poetry that contains Christian teachings, themes, or references. The influence of Christianity on poetry has been great in any area that Christianity has taken hold. Christian poems often directly reference the Bible, while others provide allegory.
Gilbert Adair was a Scottish novelist, poet, film critic, and journalist. He was critically most famous for the "fiendish" translation of Georges Perec's postmodern novel A Void, in which the letter e is not used, but was more widely known for the films adapted from his novels, including Love and Death on Long Island (1997) and The Dreamers (2003).
Alexandra Flinn is an American writer of novels for young adults. Her books have appeared on the New York Times and USA Today Bestseller lists and have been translated into over twenty foreign languages. Many of her books have made the American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults lists, as well as Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. Many of her novels are modernized versions of classic fairy tales.
Shot-for-shot is a way to describe a visual work that is transferred almost completely identically from the original work without much interpretation.
99 Ways To Tell a Story: Exercises in Style is a 2005 experimental graphic novel by Matt Madden, published by the Penguin Group. Inspired by Raymond Queneau's book Exercises in Style, it tells the same simple story in 99 different ways. These ways include
"The Gigantic Turnip" or "The Enormous Turnip" is a cumulative Russian and Ukrainian fairy tale, collected in Arkhangelsk Governorate and published in 1863 by folklore researcher Alexander Afanasyev in his collection Russian Fairy Tales, a collection not strictly Russian, but which included stories from Ukraine and Belarus alongside Russian tales. The tale is also considered a Ukrainian fairy tale, well-known as adapted by Ivan Franko.
Robert Massin was a French graphic designer, art director and typographer, notable for his innovative experimentation with expressive forms of typographic composition. Massin stopped using his first name in the 1950s.
99 Variations on a Proof is a mathematics book by Philip Ording, in which he proves the same result in 99 different ways. Ording takes an example of a cubic equation,
