His works are evergreen, which is why, four hundred years after his death; students around the world still read his plays. Odds are if you went through the Indian schooling system, you studied Julius Caesar, the story of the Roman Triumvirate’s fall and the consequent rise of his nephew, Octavius. The play is filled with memorable lines, as most Shakespeare plays are, the most famous probably being ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’, which opens Mark Antony’s elegy to his dead friend and ‘Et tu Brute?’, Caesar’s anguished cry to his beloved, backstabbing Brutus.

Charles Dickens is regarded as one of the greatest novelists of all time - he produced an immense body of work. One of his best read is Great Expectations, narrated by a character called Philip Pirrip (‘Pip’ ), chronicling his ascent through the tiers of contemporary Victorian society. Populated by unforgettable characters like the snooty, cruel Estella, the terrifying Magwitch and ghoulish Miss Havisham, languishing for a groom who never came, this is a novel that leaves its mark on its readers, no matter how old they are.

Photo: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens; Photo courtesy of books.google.com

Even if you haven’t read the book, you’ve probably heard of its movie adaptation: the Audrey Hepburn starrer, My Fair Lady. Shaw’s social comedy follows the fortunes of one-time flower girl Eliza Doolittle, who is picked up and trained by noted professor of phonetics, Henry Higgins, to speak and behave in a more refined manner. Higgins and his friend, Colonel Pickering, manage to pass Eliza off as a Duchess at the Ambassador’s garden party, thus proving that class-markers are a matter of nurture rather than nature.

Photo: Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw; Photo courtesy of www.amazon.com

Few books have had the sort of emotional and cultural impact as Anne Frank’s diary. A chronicle of her daily life and thoughts from 12 June 1942 to 1 August 1944, the diary encapsulates the period the Jewish Frank family spent in hiding from the Nazi government in Amsterdam. Unfortunately, the residents of the Annex were betrayed and sent to concentration camps; Anne died of typhus in March 1945. Her father, Otto Frank, was the only family member to survive the war. It was he who took responsibility for the diary and saw it through to publication.

Photo: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank; Photo courtesy of www.penguin.com

With an alcoholic father and an ailing mother, it falls on the two eldest children of the family, Lila and Hari, to make ends meet for themselves and their little sisters, Bela and Kamal. Tired of never-ending difficulties, Hari decides to leave the village of Thul and head to nearby Mumbai (or Bombay), where he ekes out a living as a tea shop attendant and picks up skills as a watch-mender. Lila is left to hold down the fort, but unexpected help comes in the form of kindness and support from the rich family holidaying nearby, the de Silvas.

Photo: The Village by the Sea by Anita Desai; Photo courtesy of www.amazon.com