Part 1: An invitation to a world that seems like a myth
-World history in literature set in ancient times

Stories of the Gods and Heroes of the Trojan War
Homer's Iliad (BC)
(around 750-700 AD)

The Roman Empire's Persecution of Christianity! The Vivid Passion of Saints Peter and Paul
Henryk Sienkiewicz's Quo Vadis (1896)

Part 2 A Thousand Years of Time Embracing Ancient Traditions and the Birth of Modernity
-World history in literature set in the Middle Ages

The war history of the heroes active during China's Three Kingdoms period
Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms (14th century)

A pilgrimage through the medieval Catholic era
Inferno from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy (1321)

A dynamic and romantic epic depicting the Western Middle Ages
Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1819)

Part 3: A satirical look at human desire in the age of greedy capital.
-World history in literature set in the modern era

A masterpiece of satirical literature that criticizes society through the downfall of medieval knights.
Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605)

A denunciation of the lives of workers who became poor during the Industrial Revolution in Britain.
Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1838)

A historical novel criticizing Napoleon's expedition to Russia and the aristocratic society of the Russian Empire.
Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (1865–1869)

A sharp indictment of the turbulent politics of post-revolutionary France and the plight of the poor.
Victor Marie Hugo's Les Misérables (1862)

The story of a resilient woman's struggle during the Civil War, refusing to yield to a broken world.
Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1936)

Part 4: The Scars of World War I and Ideological Conflicts Are Engraved in Literature
-World history in literature set in modern times

From World War I to the Great Depression, depicting the desires and decline of America's boom years.
F.
Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925)

A Girl's Diary, a Breathtaking Record of World War II, Humanity's Greatest Tragedy
Anne Frank's The Diary of Anne Frank (1947)

A novel criticizing Stalin's dictatorship after World War II
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945)

Immerse yourself in the waters of a time you can't see in textbooks and feel the waves flowing by.
Living, breathing characters and worlds in novels that make world history understandable on its own.
The history that teenagers learn in school is just a subject with rigid knowledge listed in chronological order.
The author, a history teacher who has long been contemplating ways to make history more interesting and profound for teenagers, said this in his introduction to this book.
He said that looking at world history in literature is 'a journey that is like not just looking at the great river of history, but dipping your hand into the water and feeling the waves flowing past your hand.'
As the author's introduction suggests, the era described in a stiff sentence or two in textbooks comes to life in literature as the protagonist's eventful life and moves dynamically.


As I read interesting works of literature, I find myself learning about history without even realizing it.
This is possible because literature and history are quite complementary.
Literature vividly portrays and illuminates the era in which a character lives through the protagonist.
Meanwhile, history allows us to look at the flow of events that occurred in the past and take a long-term view of that era.
Seeing the great flow of time and the people who live fiercely within that flow at the same time makes me feel like world history is the story of people living today, just like me.
Based on this, you will have the experience of understanding world history on your own.
World history, which was previously perceived as mere stuffed knowledge, becomes vividly understood and the grand flow of history becomes comprehensible.
Through this book, young readers will be able to kill two birds with one stone: literature and world history, and satisfy their diverse intellectual curiosity.

Animal Farm is a story that criticizes Stalin's dictatorship in Russia?
Dante's Divine Comedy contains a dynamic medieval worldview?
From ancient to modern times, deep reading enriches your knowledge of the background of classic novels.
The author fills in the gaps in background knowledge by finding historical knowledge, just as he would find Easter eggs hidden in dramatic scenes in a literary work.
For example, the Iliad, which depicts the ancient Trojan War, has notable parts other than the epics of heroes like Achilles and Hector.
These are the flow of wars of conquest and battle methods of ancient nations.
Through Achilles' five-layered shield and armor, it provides insight into the clothing and rituals of ancient nations, and kindly reveals the way of thinking and lifestyle of the people of that time.

Through Dante's "Divine Comedy," which is considered a classic masterpiece, you can learn about the worldview and related events that dominated the Middle Ages, and through Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist," you can vividly see modern world history, such as urbanization, child labor, and social welfare brought about by the Industrial Revolution.
It also stimulates intellectual curiosity about history by explaining that George Orwell's masterpiece, Animal Farm, is a metaphor for Stalin's dictatorship in Russia.
Knowing how Russian history is alluded to in the novel's scenes allows you to see the story in a different light than if you only read the story.


In this way, this book guides you on how to enjoy literature and history together through 13 novels that are considered masterpieces from ancient times to the present.
In this book, literature and history serve as mirrors reflecting each other, allowing us to see aspects that we could not have seen when looking at one alone, and thus enriching our understanding of both fields.
Therefore, this book would be the best reading for teenagers who are interested in literature or world history, or who are wondering where to start reading humanities.

Furthermore, we delve into why the author of a masterpiece novel wrote it, the historical context in which the work was created, and the evaluation it received. We read the literary work in depth and fill it with relevant background knowledge.
This book will enable teenage readers to build solid intellectual capital, rather than just fleeting fragments of knowledge.