Martin Puchner holds the Byron and Anita Wien Chair in Drama, English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He has published over a dozen books, collections, and anthologies, including The Written World (Granta, 2017) and is the general editor of the six volume Norton Anthology of World Literature, used by students worldwide. He has written for the London Review of Books, Raritan Review, Bookforum and N+1.
Introduction: Earthrise
Map and Timeline of the Written World
Chapter 1: Alexander’s Pillow
Book
Chapter 2: King of the Universe: Of Gilgamesh and
Ashurbanipal
Chapter 3: Ezra and the Creation of Holy
Scripture
Chapter 4: Learning from the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and
Jesus
Chapter 5: Murasaki and The Tale of Genji: The First Great Novel in World
History
Chapter 6: One Thousand and One Nights with
Scheherazade
Chapter 7: Gutenberg, Luther, and the New Public of
Print
Chapter 8: The Popol Vuh and Maya Culture: A Second, Independent Literary
Tradition
Chapter 9: Don Quixote and the
Pirates
Chapter 10: Benjamin Franklin: Media Entrepreneur in the Republic of
Letters
Chapter 11: World Literature: Goethe in
Sicily
Chapter 12: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao: Readers of The Communist Manifesto,
Unite!
Chapter 13: Akhmatova and Solzhenitsyn: Writing Against the Soviet
State
Chapter 14: The Epic of Sunjata and the Wordsmiths of West
Africa
Chapter 15: Postcolonial Literature: Derek Walcott, Poet of the
Caribbean
Chapter 16: From Hogwarts to
India
Acknowledgements
Notes
Illustration
Credits
Index
