The term 'world literature', coined by Goethe as a means for promoting universal understanding, and then taken up by Marx and Engels as a symbol of modernity, has today become not only a booming area of academic research, but also a publishing phenomenon. This module introduces literature from around the globe, specifically texts that have had and continue to have an impact on an international readership and that frequently demand a self-consciously different mode of reading, one that recognises otherness while simultaneously finding points of commonality. Primary texts will include the ancient Babylonian epic Gilgamesh, the classical Japanese Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, The 1001 Nights, the King James Version of the Bible, as well as more contemporary works by authors such as Bei Dao, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, Tayeb Salih and Yoko Tawada. To contextualise our diverse readings, a range of critical and theoretical explorations of what it means to read (or to write) beyond the borders of a national literature will also be studied. The vital role of translation, understood in both the linguistic and cultural sense, in creating the world literature text will further ground much of the discussion.