Around the World in 80 Books (Pelican Books) by Amazon.co.uk

Price last update: 12/03/2024

Description

'Around the World in 80 Books
explores works that have responded to times of crisis and deep memories of trauma. We too need literature as a refuge in troubled times. When our external activities are curtailed, reading ction and poetry oers a special opportunity free from the carbon footprint of long-haul ights both for pure pleasure and for deep reection on our lives and the social and political struggles that surround us, as we navigate our worlds turbulent waters with the aid of literatures maps of imaginary times and places.
A full picture of world literature today includes compelling contemporary works as well as perennial classics, poetry and drama as well as novels, hard-bitten crime ction as well as haunting fantasy worlds, philosophical and religious texts, and the formative works that introduce children to the world theyre entering. Taken together, these eighty works can help us gain perspective on problems that are very much with us today, whether the rising economic inequality that Thomas More designed Utopia to combat, the politicization of religion that Salman Rushdie dissects in his stories, or the patriarchal structures within and against which many of our books heroines have to struggle, from the work of Murasaki Shikibu a millennium ago to Margaret Atwood and Jokha Alharthi today.'
David Damrosch