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.
"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