The Global South and Literature is a wide-ranging and often fascinating collection of twenty-two essays that interrogate the meaning and utility of the concept of the global south. Featuring a diverse group of contributors, this volume takes a truly interdisciplinary approach to its central question: What are the promises and the limitations of the paradigm of the global south? The essays approach this question from a variety of perspectives, maintaining a useful critical gaze on the central term of the collection; as Russell West-Pavlov notes in his Introduction, “‘Global South’ is a shifty, shifting term that one is well advised to treat with caution, while remaining open to the potential meaning-making it may nevertheless have the power to release” (7). Although much has been written about the global south and its cultural and literary forms, this volume takes the valuable step of digging into the distinctions among concepts that are too often loosely treated as coterminous, carefully defining the global south in and through its differences from the third world, the postcolonial, and the anti- and decolonial.

The volume is divided into three sections: the first, “Origins,” explores the history of the global south and its conceptual, spatial, and temporal dimensions; the second, “Developments,” continues this exploration, while deepening the critical gaze on the central concept; the third, and longest, section, “Applications,” gives contributors a freer rein and includes essays that reflect on the idea of the global south in and through a multiplicity of contexts, texts (literary and otherwise), and examples.

Perhaps because of the intense focus on the first part of the volume’s title, the second—“and Literature”—gets somewhat less attention throughout the essays. Exceptions include essays by Bao, Murthy, and Mishra, which offer readings of literary texts that point toward the development of a global south literary theory. There are also particularly engaging essays on visual and graphic art from Menon and Nayar. Several of the essays, most notably those by Gernalzick and Durão, are characterized by a refreshing self-reflexivity about their position in such a volume, which originates, of course, from the publication and academic apparatuses of the global north; as Durão writes, the “Global South . . . makes one forcefully aware of the dimensions of the place one is speaking from” (84). The essays as a whole avoid the temptation to discuss the global south in sweeping terms; instead, they are each quite specific, offering a range of remarkable case studies, from the architecture of affordable housing developments in Jakarta (Simone) to the romantic relationships of migrant domestic workers (Cruz-del Rosario). This approach, overall, captures a nuanced view of the topic’s challenges and complexities.

One of the strengths of this collection is the freedom it allows its contributors to reflect on the topic; this risky approach, which could potentially lead to a volume too lacking in cohesion, instead results in a focused text that conveys the full importance of ideas of the global south to a wide range of topics and disciplines. This volume will therefore be useful to scholars across disciplinary boundaries, though it will be of particular interest to those in literary and media studies.

It is an audacious choice to end with an essay by Hofmeyr of which the central premise is that “the term ‘Global South’ may have exhausted its usefulness virtually before it has begun” (307); The Global South and Literature is a notable contribution to the existing literature on the topic, especially in its dedicated critical interrogation of its own central terms.