"Deus ex machina," Latin for the god from the machine, is an ancient theater term that described a play's conclusion that found actual gods intervening from contraptions to quickly resolve a plot. The term is used more widely in literature and film in modern parlance to refer to a contrived ending to a plot that relies heavily on a miraculous or contrived intervention by some other figure than the main characters.

The Nobel Prize in Literature, first established by Alfred Nobel's will in 1895, rewards authors for their total "work," which is read by the prize committee to mean an author's entire output for their career. The Nobel prize can be given to an author working in any field of literature, be it fiction, poetry, or even nonfiction. Usually, the Nobel Prize is seen as capping the career of an author, and is awarded usually to older writers.

Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being features the 1968 Prague spring uprising as a background story for its characters' lives. The novel also discusses many philosophical themes, particularly the low-art known as "kitsch." Kundera's discussion of kitsch helps reflect on the "lightness" in the title of the novel.

A third person narrator describes a narrator whose perspective is from outside any individual's own thoughts. An omniscient narrator describes a narrator that knows and understands every event and character motivation. This is one of the most common kinds of narration, along with first person narration, which is told from the point of view of a single character. A third person limited omniscient narrator has a perspective from outside, but can only understand the motivation of one, primary character. A first person narrator uses "I" and narrates from one character's perspective. A second person narrator uses "you." 

John Updike was a prolific, successful, and critically acclaimed American author whose work was centered in the middle of the twentieth century. Updike's style, which was fairly consistent over his more than twenty novels and dozens of short stories, featured an intense realism in storytelling about middle class Americans that often had frank descriptions of sexual activity and discussions of Protestant beliefs.

Virtually the entire canon of William Faulkner is set in the fictional Yoknapatawtha County. Even the stories set elsewhere refer back to or feature characters from Faulkner's other stories set there. William Faulkner’s literary achievements earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949.

Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis is a landmark novella that tells the story of Gregor Samsa, who finds himself transformed one morning into a massive bug. The Metamorphosis is Kafka's most famous story, and has many of the hallmarks of Kafka's style, including surreal situations, ironic plots, and dark humor.

Raymond Chandler wrote his first book when he was in his 40s during the Great Depression. Nonetheless, he instantly became one of America's bestselling authors, writing several books in a "pulp" vein about the detective Phillip Marlowe. In doing so, Chandler pioneered literary detective fiction, with its hard-boiled investigator, sparse language, complex plots, and dark mood. Chandler's typical Los Angeles settings also saw many of his books, like The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, made into films.

Sinclair Lewis published his novel Elmer Gantry in March 1927, and immediately had both a bestseller and controversy on his hands. Lewis' story of a corrupt and immoral evangelist, which was based on the careers of actual evangelists, drew widespread derision from religious groups. Nonetheless, Elmer Gantry was the bestselling American novel of 1927.

Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel Invisible Man tells the story of an unnamed narrator who is not physically "invisible," but instead is someone who people refuse to see. Ellison's book was an allegory for the status of African Americans in American society at the time. The book also dealt with Marxist politics, cultural norms, and issues of black nationalism through its narrator becoming invisible.