IBDP Prescribed Literature 2024

The International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) includes a prescribed list of works for the Literature course, known as the Prescribed Literature in Translation (PLT) list. This list is updated periodically, but here are some commonly studied works from the list:

European Literature

1. “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2. “The Outsider” by Albert Camus
3. “The Plague” by Albert Camus
4. “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert
6. “Perfume” by Patrick Süskind
7. “Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka

Asian Literature

1. “The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea” by Yukio Mishima
2. “Snow Country” by Yasunari Kawabata
3. “Norwegian Wood” by Haruki Murakami
4. “The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy

Latin American Literature

1. “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez
2. “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” by Gabriel García Márquez
3. “The House of the Spirits” by Isabel Allende
4. “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel García Márquez

African Literature

1. “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe
2. “Season of Migration to the North” by Tayeb Salih
3. “So Long a Letter” by Mariama Bâ
4. “Cry, the Beloved Country” by Alan Paton

North American Literature

1. “Beloved” by Toni Morrison
2. “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee

This list is not exhaustive and varies by school and specific curriculum choices. The IBDP provides a range of texts to ensure diverse cultural perspectives and literary traditions are represented.

Non-fiction Works

Essays and Memoirs

1. “A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf
2. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou
3. “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl
4. “Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood” by Marjane Satrapi
5. “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank

Historical and Political Texts

1. “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu
2. “Night” by Elie Wiesel
3. “The Prince” by Niccolò Machiavelli
4. “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson
5. “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Scientific and Philosophical Works

1. “On the Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin
2. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas S. Kuhn
3. “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius
4. “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking
5. “The Double Helix” by James D. Watson

Speeches and Letters

1. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr.
2. “The Gettysburg Address” by Abraham Lincoln
3. “The Ballot or the Bullet” by Malcolm X
4. “We Should All Be Feminists” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Cultural and Sociological Texts

1. “Orientalism” by Edward Said
2. “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond
3. “The Second Sex” by Simone de Beauvoir
4. “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari
5. “The Souls of Black Folk” by W.E.B. Du Bois

These texts provide students with a broad range of perspectives and critical insights into various aspects of human experience, history, science, and culture. The specific selection of non-fiction works can vary by school and curriculum choices within the IBDP framework.