Invitation to World Literature

Welcome to Invitation to World Literature!

Our own time and place is a world shaped by all that has come before, not just the physical world we inherit, but the world of our own imagining. The stories of previous ages and different places are part of our heritage; perhaps, given our species' propensity for storytelling, they are part of our DNA (figuratively speaking).
This multimedia series, Invitation to World Literature, offers you a passport to this rich heritage via thirteen works from a range of eras, places, cultures, languages, and traditions. These are books that we hope spark your interest, or satisfy long-standing curiosity about things you wished you had read, or introduce works that are new to you, opening up a world of connections and experiences.
Here were our guiding ideas as we produced this series:

• introduce you to the richness and purpose of World Literature, its timeless stories, its living characters, and its diverse cultural origins and contexts.
• inspire you to go further, both to read these works for yourself, and to make connections that build knowledge and understanding—connections between texts, between regions of the world, and between the works and your own lives.
• and, at the simplest level, let you in on the secret that works of World Literature are "great reads." In addition to crossing cultures, space and time, they are deeply satisfying and engrossing experiences.

We invite you to pick a work and start your journey.

Choice Reviews, April 2012: The interface is visually appealing, consistent, and organized. Clearly the core of the collection is lively, smart 30-minute films about each work. In these shorts, ensembles of leading artists and scholars read, comment on, and interpret the literary works. Well produced yet having a common touch, popular in emphasis yet intellectually focused, informative yet also entertaining, the little films have to the potential to charm a broad audience into falling in love with "world literature." Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates; general readers. -- C. B. Ewing, University of Illinois