Bringing together canonical European authors with authors from the Third World, this book analyzes the emergence of the modern global novel, and the way it mirrors the underlying process of cultural globalization. Through detailed readings of Stendhal, Hardy, Conrad, Achebe, and Vargas Llosa, this study reveals how the spread of Western modernity--materially and culturally--has been shadowed by the destruction of traditional societies. These novels focus on the individual tragedies of those who represent pre-modern ways of life; in the process, offering a corrective to Hegel's abstruse...