We can say, with Pascale Casanova, that the "world literary space" is characterized by an "unequal trade" between center and periphery and that the ironic and complex work of a writer such as Hamid acknowledges the preeminence of the values represented by the literary center in defining the truly modern "literature of the present"

DEFINE: Clarifies Casanova's concept of 'world literary space' as defined by unequal trade between literary centers and peripheries.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 909