What Is World Literature? Book

Reading this book was just so entertaining and enriching. Although some passages ramble a little, the books succeeds in giving an encompassing enough account of the dilemmas of current comparativism and the complex composition of literary canons through space and time, a process that requires the intervention of individuals as well as the involvement of casual circumstances in history, local literary production cultures and the exchange dynamics between these and the world beyond their frontiers. It was indeed very refreshing to read something by an American scholar that tries to understand and appreciate the value of the literatures of the world in a time when the official discourse of the USA doesn't get very far from racism and xenophobia. The chapters on the translations twists and turns of Mechthild von Magdeburg and the discovery, philological processing, and (failed) translations of the tables on which the parts of the Epic of Gilgamesh was written are exhilarating. What Is World Literature? should be considered a required reading for anyone interested on the subject.