The Magellan Fallacy: Globalization and the Emergence of Asian and African Literature in Spanish [Hardcover]

Winner of the 2015 A-Asia/ICAS Africa-Asia Book Prize, a global competition, for the best book in English, French, or Portuguese on any topic linking Asia and Africa.

The Magellan Fallacyargues that literature in Spanish from Asia and Africa, though virtually unknown, reimagines the supposed centers and peripheries of the modern world in fundamental ways. Through archival research and comparative readings,The Magellan Fallacyrethinks mainstream mappings of diverse cultures while advocating the creation of a new field of scholarship: global literature in Spanish. As the first attempt to analyze Asian and African literature in Spanish together, and doing so while ranging over all continents,The Magellan Fallacycrosses geopolitical and cultural borders without end. The implications of the book, therefore, extend far beyond the lands formerly ruled by the Spanish empire. The Magellan Fallacyshows that all theories of globalization, including those focused on the Americas and Europe, must be able to account for the varied significances of hispanophone Asia and Africa as well.

Now available in paperback—the award-winning first study of Spanish-language literature of Southeast Asia and West Africa

Adam Lifsheyis Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Program in Comparative Literature at Georgetown University, as well as the author ofAs Green as Paradise: A Novel, andSubversions of the American Century.

 

"This volume serves as a valuable point of departure for the study of a largely unexplored subject: fiction written in Spanish in Equatorial Guinea and the Philippines during and following Spain's colonization. ... Recommended."
—P.W. Manning,Choice