The Global Novel
Writing the World in the 21st Century
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
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 Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, and Elena Ferrante—and how they each have 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 contemporary subjects to address the perennial concerns of fiction, like morality, society, and love. The global novel is not the bland, commercial product that many critics of world literature have accused it of being, but instead a renewal of the writer’s privilege of examining what it means to be human.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This slender volume from award-winning poet and critic Kirsch (The People and the Book) contributes little to the ongoing debate over the definition and function of world literature. He starts by asking the standard questions: Can a book ever be truly global, since it is written in a specific language and typically deals with topics close to the writer's own homeland? Does translated fiction tend to look too much alike, aiming to please a certain market? Kirsch addresses these questions through close readings of selected novels from eight authors. These include Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, Haruki Murakami's 1Q84, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, and Orhan Pamuk's Snow. Kirsch asks readers to wait patiently as he wades through detailed plot summaries of each novel before reaching unsurprising conclusions. For example, Americanah illustrates the ways that a "migrant's experience of America... serves as a route to the creation of a global political consciousness." Murakami's characters, though living in Tokyo, in their "contentedly rootless" existence convey something universal about the human spirit in the 21st century. The current conversation among literary critics about world literature has now persisted for over 20 years, and Kirsch doesn't have enough original insight to justify a fresh salvo at the subject.
