Although these terms (modern, contemporary and postmodern) are generally applicable to and stem from Western literary history, scholars often use them in reference to Asian, Latin American and African literatures.
Towards the end of the 20th century, electronic literature grew in importance in light of the development of hypertext and later the World Wide Web.
[2][3][4][5] Perry Rhodan (1961 to present) proclaimed as the best-selling book series, with an estimated total of 1 billion copies sold.
The Fin de siècle movement of the Belle Époque persisted into the 20th century, but was brutally cut short with the outbreak of World War I (an effect depicted e.g. in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, published 1924).
This period also saw the publication of Samuel Beckett's trilogy of novels, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable, which enacted the dissolution of the self-identical human subject and inspired later novelists such as Thomas Bernhard, John Banville, and David Markson.