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About the Book

A Compass On the Navigable Sea is a bold anthology that reimagines what international writing can be. From Nobel laureates to dissident authors, iconic mainstays to extraordinary newcomers, this collection brings together powerful poetry, visionary lectures, and urgent reflections to comprise a literary beacon for a rapidly changing world.

Spanning five dynamic sections—from foundational manifestos to groundbreaking critical takes, from national literatures to transnational identities—this archive offers readers a vibrant map of how stories cross borders, bridge histories, and shape futures. With contributions by Octavio Paz, Elie Wiesel, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Toni Morrison, Dubravka Ugrešić, and many others, the collection bridges genre, time, and location to ask: What can literature do in a time of crisis?

Praise for A Compass On the Navigable Sea

“This is a diverse gathering, to be sure . . . a splendid poem by Czeslaw Milosz (‘Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot’) here, a thoughtful consideration of translation and cultural translocation by Mojave writer Natalie Diaz (‘It is a gift to have a language that English is too small for, since I have a life that English thinks is small’) there; Margarita Engle’s insistence that, our freedoms of thought and writing being muscles, ‘if we don’t use them, they will atrophy, and we won’t be able to defend children against tyranny’ buttressing Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare’s view that belief in literature means knowing that ‘the government which dominates you . . . [and] tyranny itself are a passing nightmare, dead matter, compared to the great order of which you have become initiated as a member.’ And there it is: literature as news that stays news, because timeless couldn’t be more timely.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“What a vibrant, refreshing anthology this is, full of surprising, distinctive writing from every continent, which has been true for every issue of World Literature Today for decades. Editor Daniel Simon is a tremendous guide to the republic of letters. His enduring curiosity for the art of translation and for new literature from other languages is evident in the dynamic range of styles and approaches included here. From the Mozambican novelist Mia Couto to the Mayan poet Briceida Cuevas Cob, the dynamic range of prose and poetry is indeed a compass to a better direction for our species and for the planet that we share.”

— Idra Novey, author of Take What You Need

“As a poet, translator, editor, and professor, Daniel Simon is almost single-handedly keeping our world republic of letters vibrant and alive.”

— Frederick Luis Aldama, American Book Review, Spring 2025

About the Contributors

Daniel Simon is a poet, essayist, translator, and World Literature Today's assistant director and editor in chief. His 2017 edited volume, Nebraska Poetry: A Sesquicentennial Anthology, won a 2018 Nebraska Book Award. His most recent edited collection, Dispatches from the Republic of Letters: 50 Years of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (2020), was a Publishers Weekly starred pick.

Pico Iyer was born in Oxford, England, in 1957. He won a King’s Scholarship to Eton and then a Demyship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was awarded a Congratulatory Double First with the highest marks of any English Literature student in the university. In 1980, he became a Teaching Fellow at Harvard, where he received a second Master’s degree, and in subsequent years, he received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters. Since 1982, he has been a full-time writer, publishing fifteen books, translated into twenty-three languages, on subjects ranging from the Dalai Lama to globalism, from the Cuban Revolution to Islamic mysticism. They include such long-running sellers as Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, The Global Soul, The Open Road, and The Art of Stillness. He has also written the introductions to more than seventy other books, as well as liner and program notes, a screenplay for Miramax, and a libretto. At the same time, he has been writing hundreds of articles for Time, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, and more than 250 other periodicals worldwide. Since 1992, Iyer has spent much of his time at a Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur, California, and most of the rest in suburban Japan.

Book details

Paperback • $26
ISBN: 9781632064134
eBook ISBN: 9781632064141
Publication date: Feb. 3, 2026
6" x 9" • 496 pages
Anthology: Diversity & Multicultural / Essays / Books & Reading / Modern
Rights: World All Languages, Audio