A user-friendly reference for English-language readers who are eager to explore contemporary fiction from around the world. Profiling hundreds of titles and authors from 1945 to today, with an emphasis on fiction published in the past two decades, this guide introduces the styles, trends, and genres of the world's literatures, from Scandinavian crime thrillers and cutting-edge Chinese works to Latin American narco-fiction and award-winning French novels. The book's critical selection of titles defines the arc of a country's literary development. Entries illuminate the fiction of individual nations, cultures, and peoples, while concise biographies sketch the careers of noteworthy authors. Compiled by M. A. Orthofer, an avid book reviewer and the founder of the literary review site the Complete Review, this reference is perfect for readers who wish to expand their reading choices and knowledge of contemporary world fiction. “A bird's-eye view of titles and authors from everywhere―a book overfull with reminders of why we love to read international fiction. Keep it close by.”—Robert Con Davis-Udiano, executive director, World Literature Today “M. A. Orthofer has done more to bring literature in translation to America than perhaps any other individual. [This book] will introduce more new worlds to you than any other book on the market.”—Tyler Cowen, George Mason University “A relaxed, riverine guide through the main currents of international writing, with sections for more than a hundred countries on six continents.”—Karan Mahajan, Page-Turner blog, The New Yorker

opinion, the Guide offers a discriminating - and sometimes controversial - view of a broad range of contemporary literatures.

Many women in cultures throughout the world exhibit resilience and power in the face of obstacles and vicissitudes. From colonial New Spain to postcolonial Africa and India, Women and Contemporary World Literature examines ways in which women in literature function within their specific culture and circumstances to confront the challenges they encounter. In spite of fragmentation in their lives - much like quiltmakers - they piece together the scraps of their existence to form an integrated and complete whole. With its focus on power, fragmentation, and metaphor, and a strong interdisciplinary approach, this book offers a unique perspective to scholars, teachers, and students of comparative literature, contemporary world literature, colonial and postcolonial literature, women's studies, interdisciplinary studies, and literature and cultural studies.

Writing Across Worlds brings together a selection of interviews with major international writers previously featured in the pages of the magazine. Conducted by a wide constituency of distinguished critics, writers and journalists, the interviews offer a unique insight into the views and work of a remarkable array of acclaimed authors. They also chart a slow but certain cultural shift: those once seen as 'other' have not only won many of the establishment's most revered literary prizes but have also become central figures in contemporary literature, writing across and into all our real and imagined worlds. With an introductory comment by Susheila Nasta, editor of Wasafiri, this collection is essential reading for all those interested in contemporary literature. Authors interviewed include: Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Monica Ali, Amit Chaudhuri, David Dabydeen, Bernadine Evaristo, Maggie Gee, Lorna Goodison, Nadine Gordimer, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Wilson Harris, Keri Hulme, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jackie Kay, Jamaica Kincaid, Maxine Hong Kingston, George Lamming, Rohinton Mistry, V.S. Naipaul, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Michael Ondaatje, Caryl Phillips, Joan Riley, Salman Rushdie, Nayantara Sahgal, Sam Selvon, Vikram Seth, Zadie Smith, Wole Soyinka, Moyez Vassanji, Marina Warner.

This groundbreaking volume may well be the poetry anthology for the global village. As selected by J.D. McClatchy, this collection includes masterpieces from four continents and more than two dozen languages in translations by such distinguished poets as Elizabeth Bishop, W.S. Merwin, Ted Hughes, and Seamus Heaney. Among the countries and writers represented are: Bangladesh--Taslima Nasrin Chile--Pablo Neruda China--Bei Dao, Shu Ting El Salvador--Claribel Alegria France--Yves Bonnefoy Greece--Odysseus Elytis, Yannis Ritsos India--A.K. Ramanujan Israel--Yehuda Amichai Japan--Shuntaro Tanikawa Mexico--Octavio Paz Nicaragua--Ernesto Cardenal Nigeria--Wole Soyinka Norway--Tomas Transtromer Palestine--Mahmoud Darwish Poland--Zbigniew Herbert, Czeslaw Milosz Russia--Joseph Brodsky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko Senegal--Leopold Sedar Senghor South Africa--Breyten Breytenbach St. Lucia, West Indies--Derek Walcott

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. The award-winning novelist Rohinton Mistry is recognised as one of the most important contemporary writers of postcolonial literature. This study - the first of its kind - will provide scholars and students with an insight into the key features of Mistry's work. Peter Morey suggests how the author's writing can be read in terms of recent Indian political history, his native Zoroastrian culture and ethos, conventions of oral storytellling common to Persia and South Asia, and the experience of migration which now sees him living in Canada. The texts are viewed through the lens of diaspora and minority discourse theories to show how Mistry's writing is illustrative of marginal positions in relation to sanctioned national identities.

This edited volume offers new perspectives from leading scholars on the important work of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616), one of the first Latin American writers to present an intellectual analysis of pre-Columbian history and culture and the ensuing colonial period. To the contributors, Inca Garcilaso's Royal Commentaries of the Incas presented an early counter-hegemonic discourse and a reframing of the history of native non-alphabetic cultures that undermined the colonial rhetoric of his time and the geopolitical divisions it purported. Through his research in both Andean and Renaissance archives, Inca Garcilaso sought to connect these divergent cultures into one world. This collection offers five classical studies of Royal Commentaries previously unavailable in English, along with seven new essays that cover topics including Andean memory, historiography, translation, philosophy, trauma, and ethnic identity. This cross-disciplinary volume will be of interest to students and scholars of Latin American history, culture, comparative literature, subaltern studies, and works in translation.

Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the finest contemporary authors who possesses that increasingly rare distinction of being a writer who is both popular with the general reading public and well-respected within the academic community. Kazuo Ishiguro: New Critical Visions of the Novels presents eighteen fresh perspectives on the author's work that will appeal to those who read him for pleasure or for purposes of study. Established and rising critics reassess Ishiguro's works from the early 'Japanese' novels through to his short story cycle Nocturnes, paying particular attention to The Remains of the Day, The Unconsoled, When We Were Orphans and Never Let Me Go. They address universal themes such as history, memory and mortality, but also provide groundbreaking explorations of diverse areas ranging from the posthuman and 'minor literature' to ethics, science fiction and Ishiguro's musical imagination. Featuring an insightful interview with Ishiguro himself, this collection of essays constitutes a significant contribution to the appreciation of his novels, and forms a lively and nuanced constellation of critical enquiry. Preface by Brian W. Shaffer. Essays by: Jeannette Baxter, Caroline Bennett, Christine Berberich, Lydia R. Cooper, Sebastian Groes, Meghan Marie Hammond, Tim Jarvis, Barry Lewis, Liani Lochner, Christopher Ringrose, Victor Sage, Andy Sawyer, Motoyuki Shibata, Gerry Smyth, Krystyna Stamirowska, Motoko Sugano, Patricia Waugh, Alyn Webley.

"Illuminating." - The New York Times Book Review Named one of "Ten Books to Read this April" by the BBC What is the future of fiction in an age of globalization? In The Global Novel, acclaimed literary critic Adam Kirsch explores some of the 21st century's best-known writers--including Orhan Pamuk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Mohsin Hamid, Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, Roberto Bolano, Elena Ferrante, and Michel Houellebecq. They are employing a way of imagining the world that sees different places and peoples as intimately connected. From climate change and sex trafficking to religious fundamentalism and genetic engineering, today's novelists use 21st-century subjects to address the perennial concerns of fiction, like morality, society, and love. The global novel is not the bland, deracinated, commercial product that many critics of world literature have accused it of being, but rather finds a way to renew the writer's ancient privilege of examining what it means to be human.

Touching on global issues such as violence, sexual abuse, gender, performativity, marginality, migration and human rights, Abani's work testifies to the centrality of his literary voice in the contemporary literary panorama. This book shows how aesthetics overlaps with ethics and how forms of extreme abuse may coexist with love and redemption.