Elena Ferrante and Salman Rushdie as global authors: a new literary category or a mere market label?

Abstract

This article aims to discuss and elaborate on the concepts of ‘global author’ and ‘global authorship’ by focusing on works by Salman Rushdie and Elena Ferrante. We intend to establish the foundations and principles that turn a writer into a global author, reflect on the importance of these writers’ taking part in the contemporary scene that debates their work, and think about the canon within a globalized literary context. On a more specific note, we seek to point out what conditions place Salman Rushdie and Elena Ferrante in this category. Our hypothesis is that global authors must be living authors whose persona and work circulate through the transnational literary universe and who participate actively in the discussions around their work and demonstrate their global relevance by means of public interventions and mass media discussions. In so doing, we challenge the notion that a world literary canon, based exclusively on authors’ literary quality, can still be sustained in a global setting. In this context, Salman Rushdie, with the release in 1988 of his The satanic verses, and Elena Ferrante, with her Neapolitan tetralogy, can be approached, apart from their literary merits, as authors and agents within the ideological and political themes of the globalized contemporary world, which are necessary credentials to attain the status of global authors.