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Book Cover for: The Global Novel: Writing the World in the 21st Century, Adam Kirsch

The Global Novel: Writing the World in the 21st Century

Adam Kirsch

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.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Columbia Global Reports
  • Publish Date: Apr 25th, 2017
  • Pages: 106
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 7.30in - 4.90in - 0.40in - 0.35lb
  • EAN: 9780997722901
  • Categories: Modern - 21st CenturyBooks & ReadingComparative Literature

About the Author

Adam Kirsch is the author of three books of poems and several books of criticism and biography, including most recently The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature (W.W. Norton). His essays and reviews appear regularly in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Tablet, and other publications. He is director of the M.A. program in Jewish Studies at Columbia University and lives in New York City.

More books by Adam Kirsch

Book Cover for: On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice, Adam Kirsch
Book Cover for: The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us, Adam Kirsch
Book Cover for: The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature, Adam Kirsch
Book Cover for: The Modern Element: Essays on Contemporary Poetry, Adam Kirsch
Book Cover for: Jacob El Hanani: Recent Works on Canvas, Adam Kirsch
Book Cover for: The Discarded Life, Adam Kirsch
Book Cover for: Come and Hear: What I Saw in My Seven-And-A-Half-Year Journey Through the Talmud, Adam Kirsch
Book Cover for: Liberties Journal of Culture and Politics: Volume 4, Issue 2, Carissa Veliz
Book Cover for: Who Wants to Be a Jewish Writer?: And Other Essays, Adam Kirsch
Book Cover for: The Blessing and the Curse: The Jewish People and Their Books in the Twentieth Century, Adam Kirsch
Book Cover for: Why Trilling Matters, Adam Kirsch
Book Cover for: Rocket and Lightship: Essays on Literature and Ideas, Adam Kirsch
Book Cover for: The Thousand Wells: Poems, Adam Kirsch
Book Cover for: Invasions: New Poems, Adam Kirsch

Praise for this book

"Illuminating." --New York Times Book Review

"Award-winning critic Adam Kirsch achieves a fresh take on world literature in this collection of essays about eight global writers who encompass six languages and five continents." --BBC, "Ten Books to Read in April"

"In an era of cheap air travel, digital communications, consumerism, worldwide urbanization, and the dominance of English...readers, editors, and critics found it easy to welcome works by Haruki Murakami or Orhan Pamuk and the snapshots of foreign life they reveal...Kirsch argues in his new book [that] these circumstances have given rise to an entirely new literary category." --Siddhartha Deb, The New Republic

"Timely, direct, and full of good sense, The Global Novel brilliantly discards critical pieties to address numerous arguments for what the twenty-first century novel is becoming." --World Literature Today

"A critical appreciation of 'world literature, ' highlighting works that combine specifics of locality with global reach.... Kirsch is shrewd on what he terms 'a new genre of English-language fiction...call it migrant literature, ' which is less about an immigrant's arrival than a transitional passage, one that reinforces the notion of globalization in novels whose cultural roots are tougher to untangle. An insightful addition to the Columbia Global Reports roster." --Kirkus Reviews

"Kirsch's analysis thoughtfully adds to the existing conversation, making a persuasive case for the global novel." --Library Journal