Albert Camus's L'Etranger, translated to English as The Stranger, tells the story of a man named Meursault, who kills an Arab man in Algiers for no particular reason after his mother's funeral. The opening lines of the novel demonstrate the main character's alienation from the world and traditional morality. These themes underlie the novel, and heighten Camus' philosophy of the absurdity of life.

Although he is perhaps better known for The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brother is a lengthy masterpiece—over 1,000 pages in English translation. The story is based on the Hebrew Scriptures's story of Joseph of Egypt—the son of Jacob sold into slavery. In writing the tale, Mann extrapolated many details concerning Egyptian myth and ancient history (as well as the psychology of religious figures) to tell a sweeping tale of this important biblical figure.

This Side of Paradise was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. 

Jack London is known primarily for his adventure novels and short stories, many of which took place in Alaska. All of the remaining authors, except Mark Twain, wrote during the 20th century. Twain is an American 19th century author known for his satirical stories such as Tom Sawyer and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  The only author on the list who is not American is British author T.S. Eliot, best known for The Once and Future King. Edward Albee is an American playwright whose works include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  F. Scott Fitzgerald is best known for The Great Gatsby.

Toni Morrison is known for her works such as Tar Baby and The Bluest Eye. Maya Angelou wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Alice Walker wrote The Color Purple, among other works. Langston Hughes co-wrote Mule Bones with Hurston, but did not write either of the works above.

The poem features a narrator who is attempting to gather everyone for the event. So even though the narrator has a slightly detached view of the event ("Let be be the finale of seem"), the narrator is also deeply involved. There is also a sense of wonder throughout the poem, largely thanks to the narrator's own involvement in the strange circumstances.

(Passage adapted from "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" by Wallace Stevens)

Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" is considered the preeminent Beat-era poem, with its stark descriptions of drugs and sexual acts, as well as its use of a blank verse form inspired by jazz. Ginsberg gained instant notoriety when "Howl" was published in 1957, and was brought forward in an obscenity trial in Ginsberg's native California in 1959.

The poem describes a woman's body as "cold" and "dumb," and that it needs to be covered by a sheet, indicating that she is dead. The rest of the poem described gathering people for some kind of event where she is central. Thus, the poem is about a funeral or wake.

The Waste Land is a lengthy poem, spanning nearly 434 lines, and narrates a modernist story about the Fisher King and the Holy Grail. A landmark of Modernist Poetry from its initial publication in 1922, it enhanced the already considerable reputation of its author, T.S. Eliot. An Anglo-American himself, Eliot became one of the most well known writers on both sides of the Atlantic, and eventually won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.

The erotically-infused poems of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair caused an uproar when the collection was published in 1924. In addition to its literary worth, the fact that a 19-year-old, Pablo Neruda, wrote about such topics was considered scandalous. Neruda would remain a well known literary figure for the next fifty years of his life, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.