"A transporting and illuminating voyage around the globe, through classic and modern literary works that are in conversation with one another and with the world around them. Inspired by Jules Verne's hero Phileas Fogg, David Damrosch, chair of Harvard University's department of comparative literature and founder of Harvard's Institute for World Literature, set out to counter a pandemic's restrictions on travel by exploring eighty exceptional books...

"From the widely acclaimed poet, novelist, critic, and scholar, a lucid and edifying exploration of the building blocks of poetry and how they've been used over the centuries to assemble the most imperishable poems. We treasure our greatest poetry, Brad Leithauser reminds us in these pages, "not for its what but its how." In chapters on everything from iambic pentameter to how stanzas are put together to "rhyme and the way we really talk," Leithauser...

"Plants, borders, and various horticultural paraphernalia make surprisingly frequent appearances in mystery plots. In this wide-ranging survey of classic and contemporary murder fiction, Marta looks at the detectives, motives, methods, opportunities, and writers that have used the garden as their point of departure. The result is a diverting and eye-opening study that deepens our appreciation of the great crime fiction writers while illuminating the...

"Iconic as a novelist and popular cultural figure, Zora Neale Hurston remains underappreciated as an anthropologist. Is it inevitable that Hurston's literary authority should eclipse her anthropological authority? If not, what sociocultural and institutional values and processes shape the different ways we read her work? Jennifer L. Freeman Marshall considers the polar receptions to two of Hurston's areas of achievement by examining the critical response...

The Greek myths are among the world's most important cultural building blocks and they have been retold many times, but rarely do they focus on the remarkable women at the heart of these ancient stories. Stories of gods and monsters are the mainstay of epic poetry and Greek tragedy, from Homer to Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, from the Trojan War to Jason and the Argonauts. And still, today, a wealth of novels, plays and films draw their inspiration...

"What does contemporary China's diverse and exciting fiction tell us about its culture, and the relationship between art and politics? The Subplot takes us on a lively journey through a literary landscape like you've never seen before: a vast migrant-worker poetry movement, homoerotic romances by "rotten girls," swaggering literary popstars, millionaire e-writers churning out the longest-ever novels, underground comics, the surreal works of Yu Hua,...