In the face of world literature, politicizing what cannot be translated

Author's name: Emily Apter Publication: National Center for Translation Year of publication: 2025 Literary classification: Literature Brief about the book: The book by Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University Emily Apter takes an opposing stance to the concept of global literature, in order to rethink comparative literature, focusing on the problem that arises when literary studies ignore the policies of "untranslatable." This book's English edition was published in 2013, and its translation into Arabic (National Center for Translation 2025) was signed by Ghada Al-Halawani. In the introduction, Apter noted that since the mid-1990s, "world literature" has increasingly emerged as a knowledge hub for literary criticism and academic humanities, and one of the indicators of this is Pascal Casanova's book "The World Republic of Letters," published in France in 1999. In its English edition (2004), the same book became a focal point in literary and cultural studies, especially regarding claims that it maintained a European-centered perspective (particularly Francophone centrality), based on the distinction between the center and the peripheries.