Featuring entries on nearly 500 writers and approximately 550 works, this new edition "represents a comprehensive and authoritative survey of literatures written in languages other than English." The chronological range is vast, beginning with the Vedas and the Epic of Gilgamesh and ending with contemporary works such as Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera.
Author articles are cross-referenced to volume 2, which contains detailed entries on individual literary works presented in alphabetical order by title. Here, again, coverage is expansive — one finds essays on, among others, Around the World in Eighty Days, Hansel and Gretel, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Madame Bovary, and The Rubaiyat. This volume also provides a section of notes on advisors and contributors from universities worldwide, an index of authors and titles by language, and an alphabetical title index.