Ths introduction provides a brief biography of Norman Mailer, addressing his upbringing, his education, his family life, his marriages, his rise to fame as a writer and cultural critic, his political activism and involvement, his honors and awards, and the controversies that swirled around his public and personal life.

This chapter provides an overview of Roth’s life, focusing on the author's upbringing in the Weequahic neighborhood of Newark, his education at Bucknell University and University of Chicago, his first forays into publication, his teaching positions at the Iowa Writers Workshop and University of Pennsylvania, his marriages, health struggles, and the significant peaks and valleys of his career, from critical setbacks to major awards and recognitions, including The Pulitzer Prize, National Book Awards, and PEN/Faulkner awards.

Modern literary prizes date from the Nobel Prize in Literature, first awarded in 1901. In France, the Prix Goncourt followed in 1903 and by mid-century numerous others had been established, many of which garner significant public interest to this day. This chapter considers French book prizes, their progressive commercialization heralded by the development of new media in the early twentieth century, and the question of their reliability as indicators of literary quality and durability. It examines the development of the practice as well as the politics of awarding prizes, the relative success of individual publishers, authors and works, and how this feeds into the wider concerns of literary history. The award of prizes is considered against the shifting political currents of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This historical examination evokes well-known names as well as many now largely forgotten.

The rules governing the conduct of host States with regards to foreign investors – and, in some instances, which govern the conduct of foreign investors themselves and that of home States – as well as those rules which govern investor–State dispute settlement are largely to be found in international law sources. For that reason, Chapter 2 focuses on the sources of international law as they relate to international investment law and arbitration. In line with the classical dichotomy adopted in public international law as it is reflected in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, it provides an analysis of the primary and subsidiary sources of international investment law and arbitration as well as the interplay between them. As forming part of primary sources, it examines international investment agreements (bilateral investment treaties and free trade agreements containing an investment chapter), customary international law and general principles of law recognised by civilised nations. As regards subsidiary sources, Chapter 2 discusses arbitral awards and the teaching of publicists. In addition to the primary and subsidiary sources of international investment law and arbitration, it also examines the role played by equity and soft law instruments in this field of law.

This chapter traces McCarthy’s place on the global map of translations, examining its timeline and various factors that played a role in leading to the first publication of each of his works in foreign languages. A number of staged performances of The Sunset Limited in a set of countries are also mentioned. The chapter finally examines the cultural reception of McCarthy in a few countries and lists some of the novels or works in other media that have used McCarthy’s work as a source of inspiration.