Overview

World literature in translation offers students the opportunity to experience global voices, styles, and perspectives. These works often explore universal themes—love, loss, conflict, and transformation—while providing insight into distinct cultural traditions and worldviews shaped by language, geography, and history.

Key Themes and Authors

• Classical and Canonical Voices:
  • Homer – The Odyssey: An epic of journey, identity, and homecoming.
  • Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy: Allegorical exploration of sin, redemption, and divine justice.
  • Gabriel García Márquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude: Magical realism and political allegory in Latin America.
• Modern Global Voices:
  • Franz Kafka – The Metamorphosis: Absurdity, alienation, and bureaucracy in modern life.
  • Albert Camus – The Stranger: Existentialism and emotional detachment in postwar France.
  • Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o – Explores postcolonial identity and language in East Africa.
• Common Themes: Fate vs. free will, exile and belonging, colonization and resistance, myth and modernity, silence and speech.

Quick Tip

Reading in translation means reading across cultures. Consider how language, metaphor, and structure may shift meaning, and how literary works reflect both the local and the universal at once.