20 Years of World Literature Across Wisconsin (and Recommended Reads to Cover the Next Two Decades)

As we celebrate 20 incredible years of Great World Texts, we reflect on the tens of thousands of high school students who have participated in the program. Every spring, students and teachers from all corners of the state convene on the UW-Madison campus to connect with one another, share the projects they created in response to their experiences reading the text, and, often, to meet the author.

In honor of the 20^th anniversary of Great World Texts, here are the selections from the last two decades. We recommend you read every text. And, if you’re eager for more, we share some suggestions for what to read (or watch) next, from the Center for the Humanities team. 

Great World Texts is supported by the UW–Madison Libraries, the Cleary-Kumm Foundation, the Evjue Foundation, the Wisconsin Book Festival, the Anonymous Fund of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Friends of the Center for the Humanities, and the Brittingham Wisconsin Trust.

#20 Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-joo. If you like this, try:

• The Vegetarian, Han Kang
• Pachinko, Min Jin Lee (and watch the television series Pachinko)
• Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder

#19: Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. If you like this, try:

• Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward
• Travels with Charley: In Search of America, John Steinbeck

#18: There There by Tommy Orange. If you like this, try:

• Reservation Dogs (television series)
• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
• A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan

#17: Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson. If you like this, try:

• Erasure, Percival Everett (and watch the film American Fiction)
• Passing, Nella Larson
• Yellowface, R.F. Kuang

#16: Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke. If you like this, try:

• Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel (as well as the television miniseries)
• The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai

#15: Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig. If you like this, try:

• The Savage Detectives, Robert Bollano
• Artificial Respiration, Ricardo Piglia
• M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang

#14: A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid. If you like this, try:

• The White Lotus (television series)
• The Disaster Tourist, Yun Ko-eun

#13: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. If you like this, try:

• The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert
• Evicted, Matthew Desmond
• Dark Waters (film)

#12: The Tempest by William Shakespeare. If you like this, try:

• Hag-Seed, Margaret Atwood
• The People in the Trees, Hana Yanagihara

#11: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en. If you like this, try:

• American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang (graphic novel and television series)
• The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson

#10: Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. If you like this, try:

• My Struggle, Karl Ove Knausgaard
• Tremor, Teju Cole

#9: Snow by Orhan Pamuk. If you like this, try:

• Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
• Seeing or Blindness, Jose Saramago

#8: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. If you like this, try:

• Burial Rites, Hannah Kent
• Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin

#7: Antigone by Sophocles. If you like this, try:

• Do the Right Thing, film by Spike Lee)

#6: The Arabian Nights. If you like this, try:

• Exhalation: Stories, Ted Chiang
• The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield

#5: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. If you like this, try:

• Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
• Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#4: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. If you like this, try:

• The Latecomer, Jean Hanff Korelitz
• The Little Friend, Donna Tartt

#3: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. If you like this, try:

• The City and Its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami
• Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson

#2: Inferno by Dante. If you like this, try:

• Over the Garden Wall (animated television series)
• No Exit, John-Paul Satre

#1: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. If you like this, try:

• One Piece (1999 anime television series)
• No One is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood
• Orconomics, J. Zachary Pike