Whatever Happened to World Literature?

The Guardian has published a clickbait list of the 100 Best Novels. The 100 best novels, that is, insofar as translation into English permits such a judgment. The list predictably suffers from “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) corruption; Toni Morrison’s Beloved is pretty good, but it ain’t the second-best novel ever published in English. Yet, what is astonishing about the list is how provincial it is. Only 22 of the 100 books were originally published in a language other than English. The putative cosmopolitans of the Guardian are far more smugly insular than their forefathers.