Is Edgar Allan Poe an American writer? An English writer? Or a French writer? An absurd question, perhaps, but it’s one worth asking as the 200th anniversary of Poe’s birth is being celebrated this year. Poe’s English-born mother gave birth to him in Boston; he was educated in England, Scotland, and the United States; he wrote his greatest works in Baltimore, New York City, and Philadelphia; he had a profound effect on the French writers Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé and thus, it might be argued, determined the shape of French Symbolism.

Yet Poe is hardly unique in having influenced -- and been influenced by -- literary traditions from around the world. To consider any major author solely within the tradition of one literature is to neglect that author’s place in the world economy of literature, in which novels, poems, and other literary forms flow between countries. Although vigorous in Poe’s day, this economy is now stronger and more diverse than ever. Go Inside Britannica to learn more about the world’s literatures and the writers who circulate among them.

The Languages of Literature
The English language is the primary medium for English, American, and Irish literature, although their geographical boundaries can be hazy. The following literatures typically have clearly defined geographical boundaries in which a variety of languages are used:

Literatures Without Borders
These literatures burst across national, geographical, and historical boundaries:

Writers Without Borders
Discover the accomplishments of these exceptional modern-day writers from around the world:

Born in Afghanistan and raised in Paris, Khaled Hosseini moved to California in the 1970s. He wrote the global best-seller The Kite-Runner (2003). Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria and attended university in the United States. Her Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) won the Orange Broadband Prize in Britain. Kiran Desai wrote The Inheritance of Loss (2006) -- set in India, her birthplace -- while living variously in New York, Mexico, and India. It won the Booker Prize. Mahmud Darwish, who died in 2008, lived outside of his native Palestine for decades and believed that his exile fired his creativity. The winner of a Nobel Prize in 2001, V.S. Naipaul has taken immigration as his subject in recent novels.

InsideFACT
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was so captivated by a translation of the medieval Persian poet Hafez that he wrote a series of love poems in imitation of Hafez, later collected as West-östlicher Divan ("The Parliament of East and West").