1930s: Canadian literature is still in its infancy and is not known for having distinctive characteristics of its own. English-speaking Canadians tend to read mostly British or American fiction, but Callaghan brings a new voice to Canadian fiction.

Today: Canadian literature is in the forefront of world literature. Writers such as Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Yann Martel, Alistair Macleod, and Carol Shields have won such international awards as Britain's prestigious Booker Prize and the American Pulitzer Prize for their work.

1930s: The political situation in Europe is rapidly deteriorating. In 1936, the year Callaghan's Now That April's Here and Other Stories is published, German troops under Adolf Hitler's leadership march into the Rhineland. The three-year civil war in Spain also begins in 1936. In 1939 World War II begins.

Today: Europe has overcome many of the consequences of the events of the 1930s and 1940s. Germany...