The narratives selected for this course are deeply involved with matters of the relationship between literatures and the world and they bear witness to a crisis in the mimetic contract that affects: 1) the connections between the work and the referential world; 2) the relationship between different levels and components of fictions, and 3) the ongoing dialogue with other works. Readings may include fictions from a range of historical periods of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and from diverse national and transnational origins, as well as those that engage with other genres and political or aesthetic practices.