Representative

Representative Texts
Texts and
and
Authors
Authors from
from Asia
Asia
Directions: With the use of the world map, determine the continents from the
following jumbled letters. Write the answer in the space provided.

1. HTNOR ECMIAAR __________________

2. UROEEP ____________________
3.AASI ____________________
4.SLAARATUI ____________________
5.FCRAIA ____________________
6.TCNAACIATR _________________
7.HSUTO REAMICA
____________________
EAST ASIA
EAST ASIA
CHINA

CHINA
China is one of the worlds cradles of civilization, has
started its unbroken literary tradition in the 14th century
BCE.

China possesses one of the world's major literary

traditions. Its texts have been preserved for over 3,000
years
Du Fu
• He is also known as Tu fu.
• Known as the “Sage of Poetry,” the
“Poet Historian,” and “the one who
brought everything together,”
• He wrote the poem The Ballad of
the Army Cats which is about
conscription - and with hidden satire
that speaks of the noticeable luxury
of the court.
Li Po
• He is also known as Li Bai, a Chinese poet
who is a competitor of Du Fu as China’s
greatest poet.
• He was romantic in his personal life and
his poetry.
• His works are known for its conversational
tone and vivid imagery. He wrote the
poem Alone and Drinking under the
Moon - that deals with the ancient social
custom of drinking.
Wang Wei
• He was a poet, painter, musician,
and statesman during the Tang
dynasty (the golden ages of the
Chinese cultural history).
• He was the established founder of
the respected Southern school of
painter-poets. Many of his best
poems were inspired by the local
landscape.
Mo Yan
• He was a fictionist who won the 2012
Nobel Prize for Literature.
• His first novel was Red Sorghum, and still
his best-known work. It tells the story of
the Chinese battling Japanese intruders as
well as each other during the 1930s. It
relates the story of a family in a rural area
in Shandong Province during this
turbulent time.
• Mo was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in
Literature.
Yu Hua
• He was a world-acclaimed short story
writer and considered as a champion
for Chinese meta-fictional or
postmodernist writing.
• His widely acclaimed novel To Live-
describes the struggles endured by the
son of a wealthy land-owner while
historical events caused and extended
by the Chinese Revolution are
fundamentally altering the nature of
Chinese society.
EAST ASIA
KOREA
• Korea’s literary tradition is greatly influenced by
China9s cultural dominance. As early as the 4th
century CE.
• Hangul, Korean’s distinct writing system and national
alphabet, is developed in the 15th century that gave
new beginnings of Korean literature.
• In contemporary times, the Korean War has made a
significant mark on Korean literature. In 1950, the
themes present in the literary works are about
alienation, conscience, disintegration, and self-
identity.
Ch’oe Nam-Seon
• He was considered a prominent historian,
pioneering poet, and publisher in the Korean
literature.
• He was also a leading member of the
modern literary movement and became
notable in pioneering modern Korean
poetry.
• One of his works, the poem "The Ocean to
the Youth” - made him a widely acclaimed
poet. The poem aimed to produce cultural
reform. He sought to bring modern
knowledge about the world to the youth of
Korea.
Yi Kwang-su
• He was also the one who launched the
modern literary movement together with
Ch’oe Nam-Seon.
• He was a novelist and wrote the first
Korean novel “The Heartless” and
became well-known because of it. It
was a description of the crossroads at
which Korea found itself, stranded
between tradition and modernity, and
undergoing conflict between social
realities and traditional ideals.
 Kim Ok
• He was a Korean poet and
included in the early
modernism movement of
Korean poetry. He wrote the
first Korean collection of
translation from Western
poetry “The Dance of Agony”.
 Yun Hunggil
• He was a South Korean novelist
who won the 1977 Korean
Literature Writers Award.
• He wrote the classic novel
“Changma” (The Rainy Spell)
that on a post-war family with
two grandmothers and their
shared grandson.
 Pak Kyongni
• She was a South Korean poet
and novelist. She wrote the
Korean’s masterpiece and
internationally acclaimed 21-
volume epic novel T9oji “The
Land” wherein she chronicled
the violent Korean history from
1897 to 1945.
EAST ASIA
JAPAN
• Japan has a rich and unique literary history even though
it has been influenced by the Chinese language and
Chinese literature.

• It has a world-renowned poetic genre called haiku ( a

short descriptive poem with 17 syllables) and the diverse
forms of theatre Noh (traditional Japanese theatrical
form and one of the oldest extant theatrical forms in
the world) and Kabuki (traditional Japanese popular
drama with singing and dancing performed in a
highly stylized manner).
 Abe Kobo
• He was a Japanese novelist and playwright
and also known by the pseudonym of
Abe Kimifusa.
• He wrote the best-known play
"Tomodachi" (Friends) which is a story,
with dark humor, reveals the relationship
with the other, and exposes the peculiarity
of human relations in the present age." He
also won the 1967 Akutagawa Award. He
also won the 1951 Akutagawa Award for
his short novel Kabe “The Wall”.
Kimitake Hiraoka
• He is also known by the pen name Mishima
Yukio, the most important Japanese novelist of
the 20th century.
• He was one of the finalists of the 1963 Nobel Prize
for Literature and won numerous awards for his
works. He wrote the novel “The Temple of the
Golden Pavilion”and won Yomiuri Prize from
Yomiuri Newspaper Corporation for the best
novel.
• “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”, translated into
the English language by Ivan Morris, based on
the burning of the Reliquary (or Golden Pavilion)
of Kinkaku-Ji in Kyoto by a young Buddhist acolyte
in 1950.
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
• He was a Japanese writer and regarded as
the Father of the Japanese short story. He
wrote the short story “Rashomon”- that
recounts the encounter between a servant
and an old woman in the dilapidated
Rashōmon, the southern gate of the then-
ruined city of Kyoto, where unclaimed
corpses were sometimes dumped.
• The Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s premier
literary award was named after him to
honor his memory after he died by
committing suicide.
 Haruki Murakami
• He was a Japanese novelist who won the
international award Jerusalem Prize.
• He also won the Gunzou Literature Prize
for his first novel “Hear the Wind Sing”. It
featured episodes in the life of an
unnamed protagonist and his friend, the
Rat, who hang out at a bar. The unnamed
protagonist reminisces and muses about
life and intimacy. Murakamis work has
been translated into more than fifty
languages.
MIDDLE EAST
• Arabic literary tradition has been flourishing in the
Middle East.
• Islam is the foundation of culture in this region - an
essential component. Its literary tradition has grown and
influenced others like Persian, Byzantine, and Andalusian
traditions.
• In contemporary times, Arabic writers experience
difficulties in producing their literary texts due to the
issue of freedom of expression and the tension between
religious and secular movements.
Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad
• He was an Egyptian poet, journalist,
and literary critic, an innovator of
the 20th-century Arabic poetry and
criticism.
• He became famous for his Abqariyat
series, a seven-book compilation
that covers the life of seven of the
most important Sahabah (the
disciples and followers of
Muhammad).
 Taha Hussein
• He was an Egyptian novelist, essayist,
critic, and an outstanding figure in
Egyptian literature. His nickname was
“The Dean of Arabic Literature”
• He wrote the novelized autobiography
“The Days”, one of the most popular
works of modern Arabic literature that
deals with his childhood in a small
village, then his studies in Egypt and
France.
Ali Ahmad Said Esber
• He is known also as Adonis as his
pseudonym.
• He is an award-winning Syrian-born
Lebanese poet, literary critic, and is a
leader of the modernist movement in
contemporary Arabic poetry.
• He was the recipient of numerous honors,
including the 2011 Goethe Prize and
the 2017 PEN/Nabokov Award for
Achievement in International. Some of his
famous poems are <First Poems= and
<Leaves in the Wind=.
Etgar Keret
• He is an Israeli writer known for
his short stories, graphic novels,
and scriptwriting for film and
television.
• His 2019 Fly Already “Glitch at the
Edge of the Galaxy”published in
English won Israel’s prestigious Sapir
Prize in Literature.
South and Southeast
Asia
• India is the cultural giant over South Asia. Hallmark
writings such as Veda, the Brahmanas, and the
Upanishads are the roots of Indian literature.

• The literary traditions of Southeast Asia possess the

influences of Buddhist, Thai, and English cultures,
especially in Burma literature. Malaysian and
Indonesian literature reflects a large part of the Sanskrit
language and Islam culture.
Rabindranath Tagore
• He was a Bengali poet, short-story
writer, song composer, playwright,
essayist, and painter. He was referred to as
“the Bard of Bengal”. He is a towering
figure of world literature and the most
famous modern Indian poet.
• He won the 1913 Nobel Prize for
Literature award for his book The English
Gitanjali or Song Offerings. It is a volume
of poetry which is a collection of
devotional songs to the supreme.
Dhanpat Rai Srivastava
• Also known by his pseudonym Prem Chand,
he is a famous Indian author of novels and
short stories of his modern Hindustani
literature.
• He pioneered in adapting Indian themes to
Western literary styles.
• He wrote the most popular Hindi novel
<Godaan= (Cow Donation) and considered
one of the greatest Hindi novels of modern
Indian literature. Its theme was around the
socio-economic deprivation as well as the
exploitation of the village poor.
Raja Rao
• He is an Indian writer of novels and short
stories in the English language. His famous
novel “The Serpent and the Rope”, a semi-
autobiographical account of the narrator, a
young intellectual Brahman, and his wife
seeking spiritual truth in India, France, and
England, recognized him as one of the fines
Indian prose Stylists.
• It won him the Sahitya Akademi Award. He
was also rewarded the Neustadt International
Prize for Literature. His literary works in
various genres had a significant contribution
to Indian and to world literature.
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan
• One of the finest Indian authors in
the English language, he wrote the
Sahitya Award-winning novel “The
Guide”which was adapted for film
and for Broadway.
• It was based on the fictional town in
South India and describes the
transformation of the protagonist
from a tour guide to a spiritual
guide and one of the greatest holy
men of India.
Chart Korbjitti
• He is the most successful Thai writer. He
was recognized by his publication of his
novel Khamphiphaksa (The Judgment).
• His novel was named as Book of the Year
by Thailand's Literature Council and won
him the S.E.A Write Award.
• He was awarded the National Artist in
Literature (2004) and was among the
honorees of the inaugural Silpathorn
Award, given to Thai contemporary artists.
Nguyen Du
• The best-loved poet and the father of
Vietnamese literature, he was most
known for his epic poem “The Tale of
Kieu”that recounts the life, trials, and
tribulations of Thuy Kieu, a beautiful
and talented young woman, who has
to sacrifice herself to save her family. She
sells herself into marriage with a middle-
aged man, not knowing that he is a pimp,
and is forced into prostitution.
Tengku Amir Hamzah
• He was an Indonesian poet and
National Hero of Indonesia.
• His poem collection “Nyangi Sunyi”- is
considered the most developed and shows
the theme of God and His relationship to
humanity, fate, dissatisfaction, and escape.
Some literary critics think that the
collection is an attempt to address the
worldly problems of Amir.
• He was the only Indonesian poet
recognized internationally
Central Asia
Abdullah Qodiriy
• He was known by the pseudonym
Julqunboy.
• He was one of the most
influential Uzbek writers of the 20th
century and Soviet playwright, poet,
writer, and literary translator.
• His most famous work is the
historical novel Otgan kunlar (Days
Gone By), the first Uzbek full-length
novel
Mukhtar Auez-uli
• He was an early Soviet Kazakh
writer and won recognition
for the long novel “Abay”
which is based on the life and
poetry of Kunanbay-uli.
Chingiz Aytmatov
• He was a Soviet and Kyrgyz author and the
best-known figure in Kyrgyz and Russian
literature.
• “Jamila”, his first major novel was told
from the viewpoint of a fictional character
that tells the story by looking back on his
childhood. The story recounts the love
between his new sister-in-law Jamilya and
a local crippled young man, Daniyar, while
Jamilya's husband, Sadyk, is "away at the
front" (as a Soviet soldier during World
War II).