Short Story as World Literature: The Deep History and Modern Lives of an Impure Genre, eds., Delia Ungureanu and Amândio Reis

Edited by Delia Ungureanu and Amândio Reis, Short Story as World Literature is an excellent volume that seeks to reposition the short story as a genre within the complex dynamics of “world literature.” It challenges the conventional definitions of the genre as modern by offering a broader perspective that encompasses different forms of short narratives across histories and geographies (“temporal” and “spatial” axes). By presenting “impurity” as a diversifying quality and refashioning classification accordingly, the collection proposes a more inclusive and heterogeneous framework and builds a genealogy that highlights the genre’s world literariness.