Even though the world is becoming more connected in many ways, it can still be difficult to find English translations of international literature. Contemporary World Fiction attempts to help readers discover works translated into English, so that they can gain a greater perspective of the world around them. As the introduction explains: “How do we get beyond the sometimes one-dimensional view of what has often been referred to as the Western gaze? One way is to sample some of the stories of other countries and cultures as told by those individuals who live in those countries or cultures and/or speak the language” (xii). This guide covers stories from over 1,000 authors that have been publishing from 1980 to the present.

The guide is arranged by language rather than geographic area. The authors explain the advantages (a shared language often reflects a shared culture) and shortcomings (books from the Caribbean have to be searched in both the Spanish-language and French-language chapters) of this choice in their introduction. Each chapter includes an introduction, a description of earlier translated literature, sources consulted, a bibliographic essay, selected references, and a list of annotations for translated books.

The bibliographic essays and the annotations provide the strength of this reference work. The bibliographic essays offer the reader the necessary context to understand the significance of these works. They also include suggestions of reference books and other relevant works. The annotations for the individual works of fiction are drawn from reviews and websites. They include the English title of the work, the name of the translator, the United States publisher, the genre/literary styles/story types of the work under consideration, a brief description, subject keywords, the original language, related titles by the same author, and the sources consulted. One weakness of the annotations is that the descriptions of the work include little information about the strengths and weaknesses of the translations and no details about the translators, but the works included in the annotations are quite diverse. Countries go beyond major European countries to include countries like Albania, Ecuador, Belgium, Israel, Korea, Armenia, and more.

Since the focus of this guide is contemporary fiction, it would have benefited from appendixes that would help readers continue to find future translated works. For example an appendix that lists publishers promoting translated works or an appendix of relevant websites would have been useful. Still the introduction does include some tips on how to keep current with suggestions of online resources, magazines like World Literature Today, and international awards.

Though there are other useful reference works that examine translated works, such as Peter France's The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation (OUP, 2000) and Mona Baker's The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (Routledge, 1998), most were published before 2000. This guide is unique in that it focuses exclusively on contemporary works. It's also less interested in exploring the history or theory of translation and more focused on guiding readers to the works of fiction themselves.

Librarians who select fiction for their collections will want to use Contemporary World Fiction as a collection development tool. It is recommended for most university and college libraries, particularly those who support world literature classes. Larger public libraries with strong literary fiction collections will also want to consider purchasing this work.