The English language is now a lingua franca spoken by about two billion people. This insightful study considers how a 'bridge language' affects world literature by analysing what it is, how it works, what are its themes, what it means for canons, and how it is mediated.

Justin Quinn is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of West Bohemia, Czech Republic. He is the author of Between Two Fires: Transnationalism and Cold War Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2015), and translates from the Czech.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Ten Questions About the Zero Style

2. Provenance: Vladimir Nabokov, Edith Templeton, Ernest Hemingway, Chinua Achebe, Leslie Marmon Silko, and James Welch

3. Acquisitions: Xiaolu Guo, Dinaw Mengestu, Eva Hoffman, and China Miéville

4. Backstory: Ha Jin, J. M. Coetzee, Jana Prikryl, Dinaw Mengestu, and Katie Kitamura

5. Conduit: The New Yorker Magazine

6. African American Exophone: Terrance Hayes, Claudia Rankine, and Bryan Washington

7. Conclusion: The World's Emergency: Kim Stanley Robinson and Daisy Hildyard

Index