Literature and Contemporary Issues, a collection of prose, poetry, short fiction and drama drawn from various periods, cultures and perspectives, is an attempt to sensitise students to some of the complex socioeconomic realities of the world around them. It presents a variety of viewpoints on a range of interrelated issues – human rights, discriminations based on racial and caste boundaries, gender issues, issues related to globalisation and the new economic order, etc., and features some of the most prominent writers of the past and the present, including Roland Barthes, Pablo Neruda, Kamala Das, Sylvia Plath, Nabaneeta Dev Sen and others.