Description
Book SynopsisKaterina Clark recovers the story of leftist world literature, a massive project that united writers from the Soviet Union, Europe, Turkey, Iran, India, and China to create a Eurasian commons: a single cultural space that would overcome national, cultural, and linguistic differences in the name of an anticapitalist and anti-imperialist aesthetic.
Trade ReviewAmbitious and engrossing. -- Caryl Emerson * Times Literary Supplement *
The scale and scope of Katerina Clark’s
Eurasia without Borders match the contours of its subject: a grand vision of a leftist literary commons that might unite the peoples of interwar Eurasia…Clark marshals her cast of characters and organizations into a coherent narrative that never feels simplified or reductive. Anyone remotely concerned with the history of global socialism or world literature cannot afford to ignore it. -- Edward Tyerman * Russian Review *
This magisterial book is indispensable for the study of world literature. Clark’s meticulous close readings, extensive archival research, and personal interviews offer captivating details and discoveries. She draws our attention to many writers and artists who are not generally considered within the traditional narrative of world literature and are therefore only known well in regional studies. -- Xiaolu Ma * Modern Chinese Literature and Culture *
[A] bold new study…It’s a mighty tale that ventures well beyond the usual scope of world literature, and timely too. Eurasia is back if you hadn’t noticed. -- Nicholas Jose * Australian Book Review *
A powerful political history of world literature. From the Baku Congress to Mao’s Yan’an Talks,
Eurasia without Borders fundamentally remaps the interconnected literary cultures of Europe and Asia. Clark illuminates how the literary international emerged in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution to transform the world and, by extension, the very idea of world literature. -- Lydia H. Liu, author of
The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World MakingDuring a crucial era of decolonization, the Comintern fostered Marxist solidarity across Eurasia that would shake the imperial orthodoxies of the time and shape the postcolonial writing soon to come. Clark skillfully narrates a chapter in the history of world literature whose importance, though previously overlooked, cannot be overstated. -- Siraj Ahmed, author of
Archaeology of Babel: The Colonial Foundation of the HumanitiesClark’s revelatory account of world literature recasts the vision of a Red East under the shadow of Orientalism, following the poets and avant-gardists who imagined a Eurasia that would transcend both language and nation. In its expansiveness, it is a fitting complement to her previous city-based studies of Petersburg and Moscow. Together, these works are the most powerful rendering of the dimensions of the Soviet cultural revolution that we have today. -- Michael Denning, author of
Noise Uprising: The Audiopolitics of a World Musical RevolutionAgainst the historical amnesia of post–Cold War world literature studies in the United States, Katerina Clark presents the history of an earlier literary internationalism committed to defining Eurasia as a contiguous cultural space. This is a crucial and indispensable book for readers interested in world literary relations. -- Aamir Mufti, author of
Forget English! Orientalisms and World Literatures
