David Damrosch is the Earnest Bernbaum Professor of Comparative Literature and chair of comparative literature at Harvard University, and director of Harvard’s Institute for World Literature. That should explain why many of the 80 titles in Around the World in 80 Books aren’t familiar to you or to me. In his Introduction, Damrosch cites Harold Bloom’s influential The Western Canon. In this book, Domrosch presents a literary canon for the world by using the device of Around the World in 80 Books to carry his arguments forward.
How many of these 80 books do you know? Do you see any of your favorites here? GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION: The Voyage Out — xi
Chapter one. London : Inventing a City
- Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway — 1
- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations — 7
- Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes — 12
- P. G. Wodehouse, Something Fresh — 16
- Arnold Bennet, Riceyman Steps — 19
Chapter two. Paris : Writers’ Paradise
- Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time — 25
- Djuna Barnes, Nightwood — 29
- Marguerite Duras, The Lover — 36
- Julio Cortazar, The End of the Game — 36
- Georges Perec, W, or the Memory of Childhood — 40
Chapter three. Krakow : After Auschwitz
- Primo Levi, The Periodic Table — 45
- Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis and Other Stories — 50
- Paul Celan, Poems — 53
- Czeslaw Milos, Selected and Last Poems, 1931-2004 — 57
- Olga Tokarczuk, Flights — 61
Chapter four. Venice-Florence : Invisible cities
- Marco Polo, The Travels — 65
- Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy — 68
- Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron — 71
- Donna Leon, By Its Cover — 75
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities — 79
Chapter five. Cairo-Istanbul-Muscat : Stories within stories
- Love Songs of Ancient Egypt — 85
- The Thousand and One Nights — 89
- Naguib Mahfouz, Arabian Nights and Days — 93
- Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red — 97
- Jokha Alharthi, Celestial Bodies — 102
Chapter six. The Congo-Nigeria : (Post)Colonial encounters
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness — 107
- Chinua Achelbe, Things Fall Apart — 112
- Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman — 117
- Georges Ngal, Giambarista Viko, or The Rape of African Discourse — 122
- Chimamanda Negozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck — 125
Chapter seven. Israel/Palestine : Strangers in a strange land
- The Hebrew Bible — 131
- The New Testament — 136
- D. A. Mishani, The Missing File — 142
- Emile Habibi, The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist — 146
- Mahmoud Darwish, The Butterfly’s Burden — 150
Chapter eight. Tehran-Shiraz : A desertful of roses
- Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis — 157
- Farid ud-Din Attar, The Confessions of the Birds — 162
- Faces of Love: Haze and the Poets of Shiraz — 166
- Ghalib, A Deceitful of Roses — 172
- Agha Shahid Ali, Call Me Ishmael Tonight — 176
Chapter nine. Calcutta/Kolkata : Rewriting empire
- Rudyard Kipling, Kim — 183
- Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World — 188
- Salman Rushdie, East, West — 192
- Jamyan Norbu, The Mandela of Sherlock Holmes — 196
- Jhampa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies — 201
Chapter ten. Shanghai-Beijing : Journeys to the west
- Wu Cheng’en, Journey to the West — 207
- Lu Xun, The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Stories — 211
- Eileen Chang, Love in a Fallen City — 215
- Mo Yan, Life and Earth Are Wearing Me Out — 219
- Bei Dao, The Rose of Time — 224
Chapter eleven. Tokyo-Kyoto : The west of the east
- Higuchi Ichiyo, In the Shade of Spring Leaves — 231
- Muraski Shikibu, The Tale of Genji — 235
- Matsuo Basho, The Narrow Road to the Deep North — 240
- Yukio Mishima, The Sea of Fertility — 245
- James Merrill, “Prose of Departure” — 250
Chapter tweleve. Brazil-Columbia : Utopias, dystopias, heterotopias
- Thomas More, Utopia — 257
- Voltaire, Candide, or Optimism — 262
- Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Posthumours Memoirs of Brds Cubas — 267
- Clarice Lispector, Family Ties — 273
- Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude — 277
Chapter thirteen. Mexico-Guatemala : The Pope’s blowgun
- Cantares Mexicanos: Songs of the Aztecs — 283
- Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life — 289
- Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Selected Works — 293
- Miguel Ángel Asturias, The President — 299
- Rosario Casstellanos, The Book of Lamentations — 303
Chapter fourteen. The Antilles and beyond : Fragments of epic memory
- Derek Walcott, Omeros — 309
- James Joyce, Ulysses — 315
- Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea — 319
- Margaret Atwood, The Penelopida — 324
- Judith Schalansky, Atlas of Remote Islands — 329
Chapter fifteen. Bar Harbor : the world on a desert island
- Robert McCloskey, One Morning in Maine — 335
- Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs — 340
- Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian — 345
- Hugh Lofting, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle — 350
- E. B. White, Stuart Little — 356
Chapter sixteen. New York : Migrant metropolis
- Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time — 361
- Saul Steinberg, The Labyrinth — 366
- James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son — 371
- Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King — 376
- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings — 381
Epilogue: the Eighty-first Book — 387
Acknowledgements — 391
Credits — 395
Notes — 401
