Celebrating the 400th anniversary of the deaths of two of the world's greatest writers with an anthology is a self-conscious undertaking, but as Salman Rushdie writes in his introduction, Cervantes and Shakespeare were themselves notably self-conscious, "modern in a way that most of the modern masters would recognise". It is the writers who stray farthest from the originals who shine: Juan Gabriel Vásquez sees Caesar in Escobar-era Colombia; Ben Okri's Nigerian Quixote battles Boko Haram; and in Valeria Luiselli's Shakespeare, New Mexico, Hamlet's players tread the boards of a mining town turned tourist attraction. In its exploration of how literature translates across culture and history, this collection pays homage to its guiding spirits.
