Literature in Late Monolingualism

Monolingualism is bad; literature is good-right? Though an oversimplification, many of us do tend to quickly associate monolingualism with control, nationalism, indifference, and racist violence. In contrast, literature stands as a beacon for expansive human expression and experience, across Earth's thousands of human languages.

But what if this division of things leads us to underestimate the ongoing historical and aesthetic relationship between monolingualism and literature? What if novels made in a European mould tend to be much more obliged and indebted to monolingual structures than their publishers, and even their critics, acknowledge?

Instead of whistling past this inconvenience, Literature in Late Monolingualism recognizes it squarely-and details how many authors of contemporary novels do so too. As it turns out, these authors and their novels tend to be far less fearful than their promoters are about the vast implications of monolingualism in literature and literary critique. Rather than rebuking monolingualism as a political vice or a personal shortcoming, authors from China Miéville to Dorthe Nors to Karin Tidbeck to Neal Stephenson courageously investigate it, aiming to show us precisely how monolingualism is still often calling the shots in our globalized cultures today.