Mexico has always been seen as a separate culture, but without a distinctly separate language, the United States and Canada are often lumped together culturally. Yet all three of the political entities that presently occupy the place we call North America are distinctly different cultures with their own individual literatures.

To demonstrate, Canadian author Merilyn Simonds examines a contemporary novel from each country:

• YOU DREAMED OF EMPIRES by Álvaro Enrigue, a surrealist novel that illuminates Mexico’s obsession with the conquest through a reversed reimagining
• JAMES by Percival Everett, a retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, the fugitive slave
• THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD by Margaret Atwood, a satirical exploration of environmentalism and the ethical interface of nature and humankind.

and traces its themes to an iconic novel from the 1950s — PEDRO PARAMO by Juan Rulfo (Mexico), ON THE ROAD (USA) and LAST OF THE CURLEWS by Fred Bodsworth (Canada) — all still in print today.