The Global Novel

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.