What is a literature?

How do literatures of different countries interact with each other? In this groundbreaking study, Alexander Beecroft develops a new way of thinking about world literature.

Drawing on a series of examples and case studies, the book ranges from ancient epic to the contemporary fiction of Roberto Bolaño and Amitav Ghosh.

Beecroft identifies a series of literary ecologies, from small-scale societies to the planet as a whole, within which literary texts are produced and circulated.

An Ecology of World Literature places in dialogue scholarship on ancient and modern, western and non-western texts, producing new and unexpected demands for literary study.