Stories are not true. And yet the greatest novels, poems, and plays tell us things about human experience that no factual account can reach. How is that possible, and what does it reveal about the nature of knowledge itself?
30 For 30 TOK: IB Literature is the second book in the 30 For 30 TOK series, which pairs thirty IB diploma subjects with thirty searching questions about the nature of the knowledge it produces. This volume focuses on the IB Language A: Literature course, asking questions that literary study raises but rarely pauses to examine directly.
From the death of the author to the reliability of unreliable narrators, from the ethics of representing trauma to the question of whether literary interpretation is a skill or a sensibility, the thirty questions in this book press on what it means to study fiction as a serious form of inquiry. Sample responses model what thoughtful, evidence-based engagement with literary knowledge looks like in practice.
Designed for IB Literature students, teachers of language and literature, TOK educators, and anyone who has ever finished a novel and felt they understood something they could not quite put into words.