Am 10. Mai 2020 startete David Damrosch, Chair des Department of Comparative Literature der Uni Harvard, ein Literatur-Projekt:
As we shelter in place in these troubled times, or when we return home after a socially distanced excursion out, we can use antidotes to the closing in of the walls around us. Literature has always provided windows into the wider world, and I’ve found myself more than ever drawn to reading writers from around the world, people who have transformed their own traumas and their society’s struggles into brilliantly achieved works of art. With a whole series of travel plans cancelled for the coming months, I’ve decided to follow the lead of Jules Verne’s globe-spanning hero Phileas Fogg, now voyaging around the world not in person but through eighty books.
This website chronicles my travels through classic and contemporary world literature, offering you the chance to look freshly at some works you’ve always loved and to make new discoveries in their company. In keeping with Verne’s punctilious protagonist, I’ve organized my eighty books on a strict schedule. For sixteen weeks from mid-May through the end of August, I’ll be posting on a cluster of five books per week, one per day every Monday through Friday.
Each week’s set of works will be associated with a place that they’ve embodied in memorable form. The website will highlight the way these works reflect or refract their world and the way they enter into the world in turn, and it will also serve as a kind of ship’s log for the book that will emerge at journey’s end. I invite you to join me on the way.
Man kann der Reise über das Projekt-Blog folgen.
Es gibt auch schon Adaptionen des Projeks in anderen Sprachen!