Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928-)

One Hundred Years of Solitude

• takes place in the fictional Colombian village of Macondo
• it is founded by Jose Arcadio Buendia, a strong-willed and impulsive leader who becomes deeply interested in the mysteries of the universe when a band of gypsies visits Macondo, led by Melquiades
• Macondo takes a role in the civil war, sending a militia led by Colonel Aureliano Buendia, Jose Arcadio's son
• While the colonel is gone, Jose Arcadio goes mad and must be tied to a tree. Acadio, his illegitimate grandchild, takes leadership of the town but becomes a brutal dictator.
• The Conservatives capture the town and Arcadio is shot by a firing squad.
• Colonel Aureliano avoids death multiple times until he signs a peace treaty. The town develops into a center of activity and foreigners begin a banana plantation near Macondo. The town prospers until a strike arises at the banana plantation and the national army is called in. The strikers are gunned down and thrown into the ocean.
• After the banana worker massacare, the town is saturated by heavy rains for almost five years. Ursula, Jose Arcadio's wife, says she is waiting for the rains to stop so she can die at last.
• The last member of the Buendia line, Aureliano Babilonia is born. He is left in solitude at the crumbling Buendia house where he studies the parchments of Melquiades. He has a love affair with his aunt which results in a son born with a pig's tail who is eaten by ants. 
• Aureliano finally deciphers the parchments and the house and town disintegrate into a whirlwind as he translates the parchments which contain the entire history of the Buendia family, as predicted by Melquiades. As he finishes translating, the entire town is obliterated from the world. 

Jorge Louis Borges (1899-1986)

"The Library of Baebel"

• narrator describes how his universe consists of an endless expanse of interlocking hexagonal rooms, each of which contains the bare necessities for human survival, and four walls of bookshelves
• though the order and content of the books is random, the inhabitants believe that the books contaian every possible ordering of just a few basic characters (letters and punctuation marks)
• though the majority of the books in this universe is gibberish, the library also must contain every coherent book ever written or that might ever be written, and every possible permutation or slightly erroneous version of every one of those books
• the library must contain all useful information, including predictions of the future, biographies of any person, and translations of every book in all languages
• however, all books are totally useless to the reader and the librarians are in a state of suicidal despair
• nonetheless, Borges speculates on the existence of the "Crimson Hexagon" which contains a book that contains the truth of all other books; the librarian who reads it is akin to God
• "The Book of Sand", another story of Borges, has an infinite book instead of library

Chinua Achebe (1930-)

Things Fall Apart

• explores the forces that drive the rise and fall of Okonkwo, a leader in the Umuofia clan, and the influences of British colonialism and Christian missionaris on his traditional Igbo community
• the title of the book comes from Yeats' "The Second Coming"

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)

A Doll's House

• Nora leaves her husband Torvald after she realizes that her marriage is nothing more than a "doll house" in which she plays the role of doll in a perfect house
• when she is blackmailed by Krogstad because of an improper act that she commits in order to save her husband's life - forging her father's signature - her husband shows disgust at what she had done instead of gratitude - his only concern is his reputation

An Enemy of the People

• Dr. Stockmann is a popular citizen of a small town. The town has recently invested a large amount of public and private funds towards the development of baths, a project led by Dr. Stockmann and his brother, the Mayor
• the town is expecting a surge in tourism and prosperity from the baths
• However, as the baths are starting to succeed, Dr. Stockman discovers that waste products from the town's tannery are contaminating the baths. He nonetheless finds it difficult to get through to the authorities with a solution and the Mayor warns his brother that he should "acquiesce in subordinating himself to the community."
• Stockmann rents a hall in order to hold a town meeting and convince the people to close the baths but everyone just turns on him. Stockmann declares that "the strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone."
• Stockmann considers leaving town with his family but decides to stay and set up a school for poor children instead.

The Wild Duck

• Gregers Werle returns to his hometown and is reunited with his boyhood friend Hjalmar Ekdal
• over the course of the play the secrets behind the Ekdals' apparently happy home are revealed to Gregers, who insists on pursuing the absolute truth, or the "summons of the ideal"

Hedda Gabbler

• Hedda Gabbler, daughter of an impoverished general, has just returned from her honeymoon with Jorgen Tesman, a young reliable but uninteresting academic
• she doesn't love him and fears she may be pregnant
• the return of her former love, Ejlert Lovborg, who is a writer, throws their lives into disarray
• thanks to a relationship with Hedda's former schoolmate Thea Elvstad, he shows signs of rehabilitation and has just completed his masterpiece, thus posing a threat to Tesman as a competitor for a university professorship
• Hedda is jealous of Thea and hopes to come between her and Ejlert
• Tesman returns home from a party and finds the manuscript of Ejlert's masterpiece. 
• Lovborg confesses to Hedda that he has lost the manuscript but instead of telling him it has been found, Hedda burns it and encourages him to consider suicide. 
• Hedda tells her husband she has destroyed the manuscript to secure their future so that Lovborg will not become professor
• When news comes that Lovborg has indeed killed himself, Tesman and Thea are determined to try to reconstruct his book. Hedda is shocked to discover from Judge Brack that Ejlert's death in a brothel was probably accidental. She shoots herself. 

Thomas Mann (1875-1955)

Buddenbrooks

• portrays the downfall of a wealthy mercantile family, the Buddenbrooks, over four generations

"Death in Venice"

• Gustav von Aschenbach, a novelist, travels to Venice where he becomes obsessed by the androgynous beauty of an adolescent boy named Tadzio
• although an epidemic of Asiatic cholera breaks out, Aschenbach doesn't leave because of Tadzio who becomes a symbol of faded youth and of attractions Aschenbach never made reality
• his entire existence begins to revolve around this young boy, and the novel ends on Lido beach where Aschenbach is watching Tadzio play with his friends
• The boy wanders out to sea but turns and finally shares eye contact with the old man, and von Aschenbach dies

Magic Mountain

• Hans Castorp visits his cousin Joachim Ziemben in a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps before WWI
• his departure is repeatedly delayed by his failing health and he remains there for 7 years
• he meets humanist and encylopedist Lodovico Settembrini, the totalitarianist Leo Naphta, the hedonist Heer Peeperkorn and his romantic interest Madame Chauchat