A review by lifa
A Little History of Literature by John Sutherland

Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.

Extremely euro-centric, with no references/footnotes whatsoever and no solid arguments for why one work is considered 'great'. The words 'great' and 'noble' where used so much with no substance behind it. Just not worth my time finishing it, especially with no proper referencing and inaccuracies, like:

Myth always contains a truth, which we understand before we can clearly see it or explain it. To help prove that point, let's look at the oldest - and many would say the noblest - work of literature that we have, the poems known as the Iliad and the Odyssey.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian poem is much older than Homer's work. It was written around 2100 BCE, whilr the Iliad and Odyssey are somewhere between the 725-675 BCE mark. Funnily enough, the author references Gilgamesh in the next chapter. He even makes a point in the intro of saying

[...] how privileged we are to live in a golden age when, thanks to modern translation services, not just 'literature' but 'world literature' is available for us to read.

Then proceeds to mostly focus on English and European literature as the 'greatest' examples of literature. No, thanks.