Ranging from the hallucinatory short stories of Jorge Luis Borges to the biting political comment of Mario Vargas Llosa, magical realism is a movement that your students can explore in detail. It is a literature that comes from deep upheaval and can be seen as a reaction to the corruption of Latin America. A good starting point would be to ask questions about its origins and chronological development. Why were these stories written? What makes them relevant today?
Between the world wars, Europe was in a state of unrest and disenchantment. Literature was split into many different factions, often with a philosophical message behind them. French writers such as Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre espoused existentialism, a school of thought rooted in the pointlessness of human struggle. The Czech author Franz Kafka, considered well ahead of his time, wrote about faceless and claustrophobic bureaucracy. Good questions would be: What had changed in writing since the first world war? What effect had fascism had on literature? How did the rising extremism of Nazism affect the way people thought and acted?
Culture in Africa was pulled apart after the Victorian Empire. Oral traditions of storytelling had to compete with the stuffy English novels taught in schools. Some writers, such as Amos Tutuola, incorporated myths and legends in their dreamlike novels, whereas Kenyan author Ngugi Wa Thiongo preferred harder realism. Teach your students about the dichotomy of African literature and encourage them to think about the legacy of imperialism in third world countries.
From the austerity of samurai culture to the postmodern cult of Haruki Murakami, Japanese literature is a fulfilling module to teach. Modern Japanese novels deal with the collective regret of the second world war and imported western pop culture, whereas prewar novelists like Yukio Mishima wrote about the strict moral restrictions of a dying way of life. Encourage your students to think about this bipolar philosophy and the literature that comes from it.