Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon as World Literature: Global Circuits of Translation, Money, and Exchange

This essay argues for Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon as an example of world literature, following Damrosch’s foundational definition. It considers how The Maltese Falcon circulates in translation and how shifting relationship between “source” and “receiving” cultures continually remakes the novel and unpicks straightforward understandings of ownership. As such, the essay explores the implications of issues arising from two “English to French” translations of the novel to think about another facet of circulation and another form of exchange: the complicated equivalence between commodities, money and gold thematized by Hammett and the consequent uncertainties facing the global economy.