What would world literature look like, if we stopped referring to the West ? Starting with the provocative premise that the ‘West’ is ten percent of the planet , World Literature Decentered is the first book to decenter Eurocentric discourses of global literature and global history - not just by deconstructing or historicizing them, but by actively providing an alternative. Looking at a series of themes across three literatures (Mexico, Turkey and Bengal), the book examines hotels, melancholy, orientalism, femicide and the ghost story in a series of literary traditions outside the West . The non-West, the book argues, is no fringe group or token minority in need of attention - on the contrary, it constitutes the overwhelming majority of this world.