Sword and sorcery (S&S), or heroic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent adventures. Elements of romance, magic, and the supernatural are also often present. Unlike works of high fantasy, the tales, though dramatic, focus on personal battles rather than world-endangering matters. The genre originated from the early-1930s works of Robert E. Howard. While there is a chance example from 1953, Fritz Leiber re-coined the term "sword and sorcery" in the 6 April 1961 issue of the fantasy fanzine Ancalagon, to describe Howard and the stories that were influenced by his works. In parallel with "sword and sorcery", the term "heroic fantasy" is used, although it is a more loosely defined genre.
Japanese literature throughout most of its history has been influenced by cultural contact with neighboring Asian literatures, most notably China and its literature. Early texts were often written in pure Classical Chinese or lit. 'Chinese writing', a Chinese-Japanese creole language. Indian literature also had an influence through the spread of Buddhism in Japan.
Tamil literature includes a collection of literary works that have come from a tradition spanning more than two thousand years. The oldest extant works show signs of maturity indicating an even longer period of evolution. Contributors to the Tamil literature are mainly from Tamil people from south India, including the land now comprising Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Eelam Tamils from Sri Lanka, as well as the Tamil diaspora.
Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early Western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies; as such, its recognised literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, the narrative art of Australian writers has, since 1788, introduced the character of a new continent into literature—exploring such themes as Aboriginality, mateship, egalitarianism, democracy, national identity, migration, Australia's unique location and geography, the complexities of urban living, and "the beauty and the terror" of life in the Australian bush.
Gerald Murnane is an Australian novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist. Perhaps best known for his 1982 novel The Plains, he has won acclaim for his distinctive prose and exploration of memory, identity, and the Australian landscape, often blurring fiction and autobiography in the process. The New York Times described Murnane in 2018 as "the greatest living English-language writer most people have never heard of", and he is regularly tipped to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Korean literature is the body of literature produced by Koreans, mostly in the Korean language and sometimes in Classical Chinese. For much of Korea's 1,500 years of literary history, it was written in Hanja. It is commonly divided into classical and modern periods, although this distinction is sometimes unclear.
Elements of the supernatural and the fantastic were an element of literature from its beginning. The modern fantasy genre is distinguished from tales and folklore which contain fantastic elements, first by the acknowledged fictitious nature of the work, and second by the naming of an author. Authors like George MacDonald (1824–1905) created the first explicitly fantastic works.
Per Petterson is a Norwegian novelist. His debut book was Aske i munnen, sand i skoa (1987), a collection of short stories. He has since published a number of novels with good reviews. To Siberia (1996), set in the Second World War, was published in English in 1998 and nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. I kjølvannet, translated as In the Wake (2002), is a young man's story of losing his family in the Scandinavian Star ferry disaster in 1990 ; it won the Brage Prize for 2000. His 2008 novel Jeg forbanner tidens elv won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2009, with an English translation published in 2010.
Sudanese literature consists of both oral as well as written works of fiction and nonfiction that were created during the cultural history of today's Republic of the Sudan. This includes the territory of what was once Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, the independent country's history since 1956 as well as its changing geographical scope in the 21st century.
Bhashyam Iyengar, better known by the pen name of Sandilyan, was an Indian writer known for his historical fiction novels in Tamil. He is known for his historical romance and adventure novels, often set in the times of the Chola and Pandya empires.
T. K. Doraiswamy, also known by his pen name Nakulan, was an Indian poet, professor of English, novelist, translator and short fiction writer, who wrote both in Tamil and English, and is known for his surrealism and experimentation as well as free verse. He served as Professor of English, Mar Ivanios College, Thiruvananthapuram for four decades.
Sundara Ramaswamy was an Indian novelist, poet, translator, and literary critic, widely considered to be a preeminent figure in post-Independence Tamil literature. His notable works include "Oru Puliyamarathin Kathai", "J.J. Sila Kuripugal", "Kuzhanthaigal," "Pengal," and "Aangal." He was a key figure in Tamil modern literature. The translations of his novels and short stories have brought him international acclaim. Sundara Ramaswamy has been praised for his versatility and his skillful negotiation of various literary forms: poetry, short fiction, and the novel.
Sa. Kandasamy was a novelist and documentary film-maker from Mayiladuthurai in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award in Tamil for his novel, Vicharanai Commission in 1998.
Yan Lianke is a Chinese writer of novels and short stories based in Beijing. His work is highly satirical, which has resulted in some of his most renowned works being banned in China. He has admitted to self-censorship while writing his stories in order to avoid censorship.
Syrian literature is modern fiction written or orally performed in Arabic by writers from Syria since the independence of the Syrian Arab Republic in 1946. It is part of the historically and geographically wider Arabic literature. Literary works by Syrian authors in the historical region of Syria since the Umayyad era are considered general Arabic literature. In its historical development since the beginnings of compilations of the Quran in the 7th century and later written records, the Arabic language has been considered a geographically comprehensive, standardized written language due to the religious or literary works written in classical Arabic. This sometimes differs considerably from the individual regionally spoken variants, such as Syrian, Egyptian or Moroccan spoken forms of Arabic.
Croatian literature refers to literary works attributed to the medieval and modern culture of the Croats, Croatia, and Croatian. Besides the modern language whose shape and orthography were standardized in the late 19th century, it also covers the oldest works produced within the modern borders of Croatia, written in Church Slavonic and Medieval Latin, as well as vernacular works written in Čakavian and Kajkavian dialects.
The Malayalam novel is an important part of Malayalam literature. This article focuses on novels, written in Malayalam language, a Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the Indian state of Kerala and the Lakshadweep islands.
Imayam is an Indian Tamil-language novelist from Chennai, Tamil Nadu. He has eight novels, eight short story collections and a novella to his credit. Widely acknowledged for his realist mode of writing, his stories are known for their incisive exploration of societal intricacies. Closely associated with the Dravidian Movement and its politics, he is considered as one of the leading writers from South India. He is the recipient of the honorary Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Selladha Panam in 2020. He is also the first Tamil writer to receive the Kuvempu Rashtriya Puraskar National Award (2022) for bringing new sensibilites to Tamil literature through his writings. Noting the writer's proclivity to Dravidian ideals, the Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K.Stalin called him "an ideologue donned in black and red". He lauded Imayam calling him a "proactive writer" in the Dravidian movement.
Ba. Venkatesan is a noted Tamil writer and Literary Critic.
