In today's sociopolitical world, sustainability has become a ubiquitous term. It is also an intriguing term, incorporating both an immensity of vision and the minutiae of day-to-day life. But its slipperiness is manifest; does it mean the same thing to a farmer, a conservationist, a politician or a multinational cooperation? Is sustainability a term whose meaning can be sustained?

While much is written on sustainability across various domains, it has received surprisingly less attention from literary scholarship, including from the burgeoning field of ecocriticism. One reason...