321 articles
Perfume (novel)
Perfume (Das Parfum, 1985) is Patrick Süskind's bestselling German historical novel about Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an odorless perfumer who murders to create the perfect scent; over 20 million copies, translated into 50+ languages.
Persian novel
The Persian novel (رمان فارسی) is the tradition of long prose fiction in Persian, which emerged in Iran in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Persian romantic novel
A Persian romantic novel is a novel in the Persian language whose central plot is a love affair, descended from a millennium-old tradition of Persian romance narrative.
Philippine literature
Philippine literature, also known as Filipino literature, is a collection of works written in various languages. It reflects indigenous, Spanish, and American colonial influences, alongside older traditions.
Philippine novel in English
The Philippine novel in English is the tradition of full-length fiction written in English by Filipino authors, beginning with Zoilo Galang's A Child of Sorrow in 1921.
Plaasroman
The plaasroman (Afrikaans for farm novel) is an Afrikaans prose subgenre centered on the farm and its meaning, arising in the 1920s and 1930s amid Afrikaner nationalism.
Playground (novel)
Playground is Richard Powers's 2024 novel (Norton; 2024 Booker Prize longlist) about four lives converging on Makatea, French Polynesia, over a seasteading vote, ending in an AI-generated-story twist.
Plot twist
Plot twist: an unexpected turn in a story's narrative that changes its direction or outcome; a twist ending concludes the tale. Associated with O. Henry, Maupassant, Hitchcock, and puzzle films.
Ponniyin Selvan (பொன்னியின் செல்வன்)
Ponniyin Selvan (பொன்னியின் செல்வன்) is a Tamil historical novel by Kalki Krishnamurthy, set around 1000 CE in the Chola empire, which tells the story of Arulmozhi Varman becoming king.
Poor Things
Poor Things: Alasdair Gray's 1992 postmodern Frankenstein retelling, Whitbread and Guardian Fiction Prize winner about Bella Baxter, reanimated by surgeon Godwin Baxter in Victorian Glasgow; adapted into Yorgos Lanthimos's 2023 Oscar-winning film with Emma Stone.
Portnoy's Complaint
Portnoy's Complaint, 1969 novel by Philip Roth (his third, Random House, 274 pp.): Alexander Portnoy's monologue to Dr. Spielvogel; instant bestseller, Australian prohibited import, Modern Library top-100.
Private Citizens
Private Citizens, Tony Tulathimutte's 2016 debut novel (also tagged 'Middlemarch for millennials'), follows four Stanford graduates, Cory, Will, Henrik, and Linda, through 2007-2008 San Francisco tech culture; New York Magazine called it the first great millennial novel.
Punjabi novel
The Punjabi novel is the tradition of extended prose fiction in the Punjabi language, written in Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi scripts across Indian and Pakistani Punjab since 1898.
Punjabi short story
The Punjabi short story is a prose fiction genre in the Punjabi language, written in Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi scripts, that emerged in the twentieth century.
Push (novel)
Push (1996) is Sapphire's debut novel about Claireece "Precious" Jones, an illiterate, abused Harlem teenager; published by Knopf, it won the Stephen Crane First Fiction award and inspired the 2009 Oscar-winning film Precious.
Q & A (novel)
Q & A is Vikas Swarup's 2005 debut novel about Ram Mohammad Thomas, an orphan jailed after winning the quiz show Who Will Win a Billion?; it inspired the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire.
Remarkably Bright Creatures
Remarkably Bright Creatures (Shelby Van Pelt, Ecco/HarperCollins, May 2022) is a debut novel about a grieving night cleaner at a Puget Sound aquarium and Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus narrator; over 1.5 million copies sold, a Netflix film announced.
Remarkably Bright Creatures (novel)
Remarkably Bright Creatures is Shelby Van Pelt's 2022 debut novel (Ecco/HarperCollins, Bloomsbury) about widow Tova Sullivan, the octopus Marcellus at Sowell Bay Aquarium, and Cameron; over two million copies sold, Netflix film 2026.
Republican-era Turkish novel
The Republican-era Turkish novel (Cumhuriyet Dönemi Türk Romanı) covers novels written in Turkey from the Republic's proclamation in 1923 to the present, with major early works appearing in 1922.
Republican-era Turkish short story
The Republican-era Turkish short story (hikâye, öykü) is short fiction written in Turkey from the Republic's founding in 1923 onward, in plain language focused on social themes.
Romance de 30
Romance de 30 is the Brazilian social and regionalist fiction of 1930 to 1945, whose leading authors include Graciliano Ramos, Jorge Amado, and Rachel de Queiroz.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国演义, Sanguo yanyi), attributed to Luo Guanzhong, is a Ming historical novel of the Wei-Shu-Wu struggle, based on the Sanguozhi, with three full English translations and vast East Asian cultural influence.
Russian literature
Russian literature: the Russian-language literary tradition from Kievan Rus's 988 Christianization through imperial, Soviet socialist-realist, and post-Soviet writing, shaped by state censorship and now tracked by declining print statistics.
Ruwan Bagaja
Ruwan Bagaja, meaning "The Water of Cure", is a 1934 Hausa-language novel by Nigerian writer Alhaji Abubakar Imam, regarded as the first classic of modern Hausa prose fiction.
Sagas of Icelanders
Sagas of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur), also called Icelandic family sagas: about forty medieval Icelandic prose narratives, written in the 13th–14th centuries but set c. 870–1030, depicting settlement, feud, and family history in the Icelandic Commonwealth.
Satire
Satire: a humorous, critical literary mode attacking real, specific targets using irony, exaggeration, and ridicule. Named from Latin satura; classified first in Rome; three kinds, Horatian, Juvenalian, Menippean.
Seascraper (novel)
Seascraper is Benjamin Wood's fifth novel (Scribner, November 4, 2025; 176 pages), about 20-year-old shrimper Thomas Flett in fictional Longferry, early 1960s England. Longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, it won the Nero Book Award for fiction.
Setting (narrative)
Setting (narrative): the spatiotemporal circumstances, time, place, and social environment, in which a story's events occur; also called milieu. Distinguished from spatial frames and storyworld in narratology; typed as irrelevant, functional, mental, or symbolic in prose fiction.
Shona novel
A Shona novel is a novel written in Shona, a Bantu language of Zimbabwe, forming the central genre of written Shona literature. The genre began with Solomon Mutswairo's Feso, published in 1956.
Shuggie Bain
Shuggie Bain is the 2020 debut novel of Douglas Stuart, set in Glasgow, following a boy and his alcoholic mother, and winner of the 2020 Booker Prize.