Summary This poem by Kevin Halligan is about the antics of a cockroach that crawls about the flooring in a room. Though on the face of it, the poem describes the aimlessness of the insect, it applies to humans in general and to the narrator in particular. The cockroach, circumspect…
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed on 28th May 1964 and it was an off shoot of the Arab League. As the name of the organization suggests, the Arabs wanted liberation and their own homeland. They were struggling for their won against the Jews. In many ways it was an…
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Israel and Palestine have been at loggerheads for centuries now. The fundamental requirement for both are noble – to create a homeland solely for the Jews and Arabs. The issue became ugly because each wanted to create a state excluding the other. Over all these years there has been constant…
Author Background Anne Moody was born in 1940, smack in the middle of WWII. Her parents broke up when she was only about 5 or 6. Though she grew up in a household where her mother did not encourage any questions about segregation or civil rights, from her school days,…
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Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born In Columbia in 1928. He is a writer who has attracted a huge amount of critical attention. The journalistic techniques that he used as well as the use of magical realism which was the casual incorporation of elements of fantasy or myth into fiction found…
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Arab- Israel conflict started early in the 20th Century and is going on till now. There were periods when there was some peace and periods where there was heavy shelling. The super powers of worlds played a role to broker peace. However the super powers took sides and spoke for…
David Ben Gurion was born on October 16th 1886. He was the primary founder of the State of Israel and naturally the first Prime Minister of Israel. From a very young age he showed his interest and desire to form a State for the Jews and worked lifelong for it….
The Hebrew Resistance Movement was a movement which was prevalent for ten months in Palestine. This movement was also known as Jewish Resistance Movement and sometimes as United Resistance Movement. It was an alliance between Zionist paramilitary organizations Irgun, Haganah and Lehi. This resistance movement was against the British and…
How to achieve top scores in IGCSE: The International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) is a world renowned curriculum. Many see it as a gateway to admission into reputed universities of the world. This is absolutely true for the child is equipped for it once he goes through this…
International General Certificate for Secondary Education (IGCSE) is a certification for secondary studies which prepares students for the A Level, International Baccalaureate and BTEC Level 3. It is an examination system developed by University of Cambridge International Examinations in 1988. It offers inter-national curricula and is an alternative to many…
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was born on 18th December 1878. He held complete power over Soviet Union after Lenin and he held on till his death on March 5th 1953. He held the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union but he…
Vladimir IIich Ulanov, known popularly as Lenin, was the leader of Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and went to become the architect of the Soviet Union and became its first head. Lenin came out of an exile to lead the revolution in 1917. He mobilised the people, consolidated his power cracked…
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was a journalist turned politician. He was the leader of the National Fascist Party and was the Prime Minister from 1922 to 1943. He was elected to the post constitutionally and ruled so for three years. After that he dropped the pretence of democracy and took up…
Afghan Civil War started after the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan and it left the Afghan communist government to protect themselves from the Mujahideen. The phase of the war was in between 1989 to 1992. Even though the government fell in 1992 the civil war continued and there was large…
Revision Questions on The Gulf Crisis 4 markers YOUR EXISTING AD GOES HERE How was Iraq governed in the 20th century? What was Arab nationalism? What did the Baath Party stand for? What was the role of Khairallah Tulfah in Saddam’s rise to power? Describe Saddam’s early political activities…
Author background Chris Crutcher is a writer of young adult fiction who tackles the themes of physical disability and loss of identity. Most of his heroes are young adults who excel in sports but through an accident lose their physical prowess. Their role in life changes suddenly changes and they…
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Author Background Catherine Perkins Gilman was an early feminist who lived an unconventional lifestyle that was not understood by the people of her time. When she a young girl, her father abandoned his family. Catherine was raised by her mother with help from her absent father’s aunts who included Harriet…
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Author Background Dickens is perhaps England’s best known novelist. He was also a social critic who was concerned about the condition of women and children who worked in squalid sweat-shops that were common in many of the towns of England. Most of Dickens’ stories have important characters who struggle against…
The Lemon Orchard – Alex La Guma Author Background The Lemon Orchard – Alex La Guma – Alex La Guma was born in South Africa to a Jimmy La Guma who was very active in anti-apartheid politics. Even when he was a very young man, Alex La Guma took part…
Meteor By John Wyndham Author Background Meteor by John Wyndham – John Wyndham was only one of the many pen names the writer John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris used in his lifetime. Others were John Beynon, John Beynon Harris, Johnson Harris, Lucas Parkes and Wyndham Parkes. When he was…
Afghanistan has been a geographical area which is marked by strife and struggle in the form of battles, civil wars and terrorism. Afghanistan was a part of India then and India was ruled by different clans. The Hindu, Sikh and the Afghans has their kingdom spread all over North India…
Morocco was of strategic country that most European countries wanted to take control of. The crisis of 1905 and 1911 was a result of this tussle for control over Morocco. France wanted to control it while Germany tried to stop it. The major powers of Europe like France, Spain and…
Author Background Olive Ann Burns was born in Georgia. After graduating from the University of North Carolina, she worked on the staff of Atlanta Journal, authoring an advice column “Ask Amy” which was very popular among readers. It was the discovery that she has cancer that spurred her to write…
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Russian Revolution is actually two revolutions which happened in Russia in 1917. The revolution took apart the Tsarist autocracy and finally led to the birth and rise of Soviet Union. The Russian Empire bowed with the resignation of Emperor Nicholas II. The old government was reinstated by an interim government…
The Algiers War was between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front and it happened between the years 1954 to 1962. The war led to Algeria gaining independence from France and in history this is considered as an important decolonization war because of its complex nature. The conflicts were branded…
Author Background Leslie Marmon Silko is America’s leading Native American writer. Though she was of a mixed White American and Native Indian ancestry, she identified herself with the Laguna heritage. She grew up in a house at the edge of the Laguna Pueblo reservation. As her parents had jobs in…
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Author Background Louis de Bernieres is a British novelist who shot to fame with his fourth book namely, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. It won several awards and was later made into a film that was much talked about. While many saw it as a simple war-time romance, local people and those…
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Candide is Voltaire’s signature work. Voltaire was a French writer who even when very young scandalized and amused the French people by turns. He was in the vanguard of the Enlightenment movement; but he satirized the movement also as it was not without failings. Voltaire was frequently banished from France…
Author background Henry Roth was born in what is now called Ukraine but moved to the US in 1908. Much of his early life was spent in the Jewish ghettos of New York. Call it Sleep was published in 1934 when it received mixed reviews. For the next sixty years,…
After World War 1, when Germany was defeated, it had to pay compensation for the cost of the war under the Treaty of Versailles (1919). When Germany could not pay, French troops occupied the Ruhr area in Germany to extract compensation in kind. It lasted from 1923 to 1925. Ruhr:…
