UNESCO and the Fate of the Literary

"Brouillette brings to our attention a signal institution of postwar global culture, one that has been all but entirely ignored in previous studies of world literature. In her impressive and bracingly severe account, UNESCO becomes an institutional lens through which we can see the much larger and more powerful set of economic realities that have shaped our sense of what role literature should play in the world at large."-Mark McGurl, Stanford University "This book adds another dimension to Brouillette's already impressive scholarship on postcolonial literature and the global economic downturn. With bracingly rigorous yet refreshingly traditional methodology, she provides a bravura demonstration of nuanced, non-reductive Marxist analysis."-Stephen Schryer, University of New Brunswick "In her probe of UNESCO's transformations, Sarah Brouillette skewers the complacency of the reading class. Readers of this book, all of whom will be members of this class, will be enlightened, troubled, and perhaps mortified by their participation in the consolations of the literary world, including its most critical and politically aware corners. Brouillette's analysis is both necessary and devastating."-Wendy Griswold, Northwestern University "Sarah Brouillette's excellent new book, UNESCO and the Fate of the Literary, grounds the category of 'world literature' in the only literary institution capable of matching the concept's scale....[Her] book is a powerful argument for the modest power of literature, however long it lasts."-Christopher Findeisen, Los Angeles Review of Books