Orhan Pamuk in conversation with Adam Kirsch

Monday, November 13, 2017
6:00pm — 7:00pm
Columbia University
Graduate School of Journalism
Jamail Lecture Hall, room 301
(116th and Broadway)
View Map

What will 21st-century fiction look like?

Nobel Prize-winning Orhan Pamuk will be at Columbia University to speak with acclaimed literary critic Adam Kirsch. Kirsch's latest book, The Global Novel: Writing for the World in The 21st Century, examines some of our most beloved writers, including Pamuk, to better understand literature in the age of globalization.

The global novel, Kirsch finds, is not so much a genre as a way of imagining the world, one that allows the novel to address both urgent contemporary concerns—climate change, genetic engineering, and immigration—along with timeless themes, such as morality, society, and human relationships. Whether its stories take place on the scale of the species or the small town, the global novel situates its characters against the widest background of the imagination. The way we live now demands nothing less than the global perspective our best novelists have to offer.

"Who has the authority to speak for the world? Are Western ideals central to global literature, or do speculative novels that unspool Western ideas to tragic ends (like Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake” and Houellebecq’s “The Possibility of an Island”) epitomize literary colonialism? Kirsch’s work is curious and illuminating." —Heather Scott Partington, The New York Times Book Review

Join us for a discussion and Q&A with the writers, followed by a book signing.

This event is free to attend and seating will be available on a first come, first served basis. Doors open at 5:30 PM.

RSVP