Far from suggesting that we replace theories of an omnipresent `end of history' with a traditional, single, diachronic timeline, this book encourages the development of such a timeline's rigorous inverse: a synchronic, multi-faceted and multi-temporal history of the contemporary in literature, and thus of contemporary global literatures.

Focusing on its literary programming in particular, this study of UNESCO shines a light on the close relationship between state-backed economic development and the global postwar cultural policy establishment.