One World of Literature addresses students' concerns about social relevance in their reading, and their growing interest in the literature of other cultures. This provocative anthology brings together fiction, poetry, and drama by twentieth-century authors from around the world.

"The introductions in this anthology are meant to be just that: a basic overview of what students need to know before they begin reading, with topics that students can research further. An open access literature textbook cannot be a history book at the same time, but history is the great companion of literature: The more history students know, the easier it is for them to interpret literature. In an electronic age, with this text available to anyone with computer access around the world, it has never been more necessary to recognize and understand differences among nationalities and cultures. The literature in this anthology is foundational, in the sense that these works influenced the authors who followed them. A word to the instructor: The texts have been chosen with the idea that they can be compared and contrasted, using common themes. Rather than numerous (and therefore often random) choices of texts from various periods, these selected works are meant to make both teaching and learning easier. While cultural expectations are not universal, many of the themes found in these works are."--Open Textbook Library.

World Literature is an increasingly influential subject in literary studies, which has led to the re-framing of contemporary ideas of ‘national literatures’, language and translation. World Literature: A Reader brings together thirty essential readings which display the theoretical foundations of the subject, as well as showing its conceptual development over a two hundred year period. The book features: an illuminating introduction to the subject, with suggested reading paths to help readers navigate through the materials texts exploring key themes such as globalization, cosmopolitanism, post/trans-nationalism, and translation and nationalism writings by major figures including J. W. Goethe, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Longxi Zhao, David Damrosch, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Pascale Casanova and Milan Kundera. The early explorations of the meaning of ‘Weltliteratur’ are introduced, while twenty-first century interpretations by leading scholars today show the latest critical developments in the field. The editors offer readers the ideal introduction to the theories and debates surrounding the impact of this crucial area on the modern literary landscape.

One World Two is the eagerly awaited follow-up to One World and another globe-trotting collection of stories. But it is more than simply an anthology of short fiction, as it contains representative literature from all over the world, conveying the reader on thought-provoking journeys across continents, cultures and landscapes. One World Two is even more ambitious than Volume One in its geographic scope, featuring twenty-one writers drawn from every continent. Most of the stories are unique to this volume, while others are appearing for the first time in English (Egypt's Mansoura Ez-Eldin and Brazil's Vanessa Barbara). The themes and writing styles are as richly diverse as their writers' origins. The collection is built around a loose theme of building bridges. It is interested in the human condition as a dynamic central line linking individuals, cultures and experiences: east and west, north and south, and, perhaps most importantly, past, present and future. This book features established stars such as Edwidge Danticat (Breath, Eyes, Memory), Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer) and Aminatta Forna (The Hired Man) and authors who are steadily building a reputation such as Fan Wu, Ana Menéndez and Daniel Alarcon. In order of appearance, the authors are: Yewande Omotoso, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Heidi North-Bailey, Ana Menéndez, Mathew Howard, Okwiri Oduor, Desiree Bailey, Vamba Sherif, Alice Melike Ulgezer, Daniel Alarcon, Mansoura Ez-Eldin, Aminatta Forna, Nahid Rachlin, Samuel Munene, Vanessa Barbara, Ret'sepile Makamane, Fan Wu, Olufemi Terry, Balli Kaur Jaswal, Chris Brazier, and Edwidge Danticat. Edited and compiled by Ovo Adagha and Chris Brazier.

This Companion presents lucid and exemplary critical essays, introducing readers to the major ideas and practices of world literary studies.

Politicising World Literature: Egypt, Between Pedagogy and the Public engages with postcolonial and world literature approaches to examine the worldly imaginary of the novel genre and assert the political imperative to teaching world literature. How does canonising world literature relate to societal, political or academic reform? Alternating between close reading of texts and literary history, this monograph studies a corpus of novels and travelogues in English, Arabic, French, Czech and Italian to historicise Egypt’s literary relations with different parts of the world in both the modern period and the pre-modern period. In this rigorous study, May Hawas argues that protagonists, particularly in times of political crises, locate themselves as individuals with communal or political affiliations that supersede, if not actually resist, national affiliations.

This volume engages critically with the recent and ongoing consolidation of "world literature" as a paradigm of study. On the basis of an extended, active, and ultimately more literary sense of what it means to institute world literature, it views processes of institutionalization not as limitations, but as challenges to understand how literature may simultaneously function as an enabling and exclusionary world of its own. It starts from the observation that literature is never simply a given, but is always performatively and materially instituted by translators, publishers, academies and academics, critics, and readers, as well as authors themselves. This volume therefore substantiates, refines, as well as interrogates current approaches to world literature, such as those developed by David Damrosch, Pascale Casanova, and Emily Apter. Sections focus on the poetics of writers themselves, market dynamics, postcolonial negotiations of discrete archives of literature, and translation, engaging a range of related disciplines. The chapters contribute to a fresh understanding of how singular literary works become inserted in transnational systems and, conversely, how transnational and institutional dimensions of literature are inflected in literary works. Focusing its methodological and theoretical inquiries on a broad archive of texts spanning the triangle Europe-Latin America-Africa, the volume unsettles North America as the self-evident vantage of recent world literature debates. Because of the volume’s focus on dialogues between world literature and fields such as postcolonial studies, translation studies, book history, and transnational studies, it will be of interest to scholars and students in a range of areas.