This is Aimé Césaire, a French-educated native of Martinique and an incipient member of the négritude ideology. His work is often preoccupied with power, colonial rule, and racial identity.

This is Sebastián Salazar Bondy, whose other notable works include Something That Wants to Die, There’s No Gasoline in Heaven, and Flora Tristán.

This is Jean Genet, whose work often features social misfits or people on the outskirts of a community. His work, which is heavily steeped in absurdism, investigates morality as well as the constructs of racial and social identities.

This is Eugène Ionesco, whose works include The Rhinoceros, The Bald Soprano, and Exit the King. Ionesco plays often emphasize the pointlessness of human existence and utilize disorienting elements such as non-sequiturs, dreamlike storytelling, and jarring verbal feats.

This is Ama Ata Aidoo, a poet, playwright, and novelist. She often incorporates elements of African legend, cultural identity, gender studies, and feminism into her work.

The playwright in question is Wole Solinka. His work often concerns colonialism and contemporary African politics, government, and corruption. His plays have been said to be influenced by traditional Yoruba drama and theatre of the absurd.

Brecht’s works, among which are Mother Courage and Her Children and The Caucasian Chalk Circle, often encouraged audience participation and deep critical thinking. He is often considered a founder of Epic Theatre, although he chose to qualify or reject that classification. Mother Courage and Her Children is one of many of his plays written in response to the rise of Nazism.

This is Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the most influential Latin American writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His work (which includes novels and essays as well as drama) is often political and anti-nationalistic and is deeply invested in portraying power struggles between rulers and the poor or disenfranchised.

The author of the passage is John Donne, who served as the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London from 1621 until his death in 1631.  This sermon was Donne's most famous piece of prose and is one that you should definitely know for the test.

Adapted from "Meditation XVII" in Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and Severall Steps in My Sicknes by John Donne (1624)

British author Horace Walpole is widely considered the progenitor of the Gothic style, which is characterized by its mix of horror, romanticism, and macabre excess. Walpole’s 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto is usually described as the first work in this genre, although Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’ unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood, and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” are all more widely known works of Gothic literature.