David Damrosch, chair of Harvard University's department of comparative literature, set out to counter a pandemic's restrictions on travel by exploring eighty exceptional books from around the globe. Following a literary itinerary from London to Venice, Tehran and points beyond, and via authors from Woolf and Dante to Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka, Mo Yan, and Olga Tokarczuk, he explores how these works have shaped our idea of the world. Damrosch explores how writers live in two very different worlds—the world of their personal experience and the world of books that have enabled great writers to give shape and meaning to their lives. In his literary cartography, Damrosch is a global invitation to look beyond ourselves and our surroundings, and to see our world and its literature in new ways.