Henrik Ibsen's play, A Doll's House, tells the story of Nora, a seemingly happy housewife who secretly forges her father's signature to secure a loan to save her husband, Torvald, and must confront blackmail from the moneylender. When Torvald discovers the forgery, he reacts with outrage, not out of concern for Nora but for his own social reputation, leading Nora to realize their marriage is based on a hollow performance of happiness. Disillusioned with her husband's superficiality and her own subordinate role, Nora leaves him and their children to pursue a path of self-discovery, a controversial act for the time.  

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie follows Nigerian teenagers Ifemelu and Obinze, who fall in love but are separated by Ifemelu's move to America and Obinze's failed attempt to join her in the U.S. While Ifemelu experiences firsthand the complexities of race in America and becomes known for her blog on the topic, Obinze becomes an undocumented immigrant in London.

 After fifteen years apart, they reunite in a democratic Nigeria, and the novel explores their diverging experiences, identities, and a potential rekindling of their relationship.   

Persepolis is a graphic memoir by Marjane Satrapi detailing her childhood and adolescence in Iran, beginning with the 1979 Islamic Revolution and continuing through the oppressive fundamentalist regime and the devastating Iran-Iraq War. Growing up in a secular, upper-middle-class family, Marjane witnesses the suppression of personal freedoms, particularly for women, and observes the stark contrast between Western culture and her country's increasingly strict new social order. She grapples with the political upheaval, the loss of innocence, and the struggle to reconcile her personal identity with the violent societal changes around her. 

Persepolis: A Return, the second part of Marjane Satrapi's graphic autobiography, follows her to Austria at age 14 to escape the oppression of the Iranian Revolution. As a teenager in Europe, she struggles with culture shock, identity crisis, and loneliness, leading to drug use, homelessness, and disillusionment with Western society. After her parents' intervention, she returns to Iran for a short time, finds the strict regime difficult to bear, and eventually leaves for France to study art 

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel about Winston Smith in Oceania, a totalitarian society under the constant surveillance of "Big Brother" and his Party. Winston secretly rebels by writing in a diary and engaging in a forbidden love affair with Julia. 

They are eventually captured by the Thought Police, and Winston is brutally tortured by O'Brien until he betrays Julia, ultimately loving Big Brother and accepting the Party's fabricated reality of "2 + 2 = 5".