AP LITERATURE

The World Was All Before Them

Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The World was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide: They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.

JOHN MILTON · PARADISE LOST, THE CLOSING DESCRIPTION OF THE “EXPULSION” FROM EDEN

Like Milton’s Adam and Eve, the characters in these novels are cast out of the familiar into worlds remade by empire. The pages of this site are designed to contextualize the nature and consequences of their displacement.

Text One · Min Jin Lee

Pachinko

1910–1989 · KOREA & JAPAN

Four generations of a Korean family across the Japanese occupation, war, and postwar Osaka.

Text Two · Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart

1890s · IGBOLAND, NIGERIA

A late-19th-century Igbo village meets the slow, then sudden, arrival of empire.