ABSTRACT
To return, care of Arjun Appadurai and Néstor García Canclini, to one of the originating premises of this study: imaginative constructions of globalization are a key part of this overall world-systemic process defining our contemporary era, not just a second-order reflection of it. One of these that stands out in particular is the sense of individuals being subjected to powerful transnational forces beyond the ability of individuals and local institutions to alter. In different ways the characters of Amitav Ghosh, Roberto Bolaño, and Michel Houellebecq are all at the mercy of transnational currents that have the ability to radically disrupt lives and communities, to cause death, and to rupture traditional ways of life. Another recurrent theme in fictional renderings of globalization, one that is pretty inescapable when representing both the center and periphery of the world system in the same text, regards the stark material inequalities fostered by global free market capitalism.
