Keeping track of contemporary writing is by its nature difficult. What are the recent developments in Chinese or Israeli fiction? What has happened to poetry in Russia since the fall of Communism? Are we even up to date with the best novels or plays of English-speaking countries round the world? Every year, so much is published which we feel we should know about, that there's a strong need for a volume to evaluate it and put us on the track of what is best worth reading.

This new Guide - the only work of its kind to cover world literature of the last thirty years - does just that: in twenty-eight lively and trenchant chapters it assesses the most important and interesting literature developments in all five continents.

Taking 1960 as its starting-point, and coming right up to date, the book explores the recent writing of cultures as various as Australian and Spanish-American, French, Japanese, and Czech, Indian and New Zealand - and of course American, English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh.

Each chapter discusses the literary and cultural contexts for authorship in its particular area, throwing light on a great number of significant writers - including household names such as Mishima, Toni Morrison, Derek Walcott, Patrick White, and Gunter Grass, but setting alongside them many others who may be less familiar but whose work is often just as well worth reading.

Combining hard information with intelligent opinion, the Guide offers a discriminating - and sometimes controversial - view of a broad range of contemporary literatures.