This ambitious work aims to utterly change the way Don Quixote and Cervantes' other works are read, particularly the posthumous The Trial of Persiles and Sigismunda. William Childers sets out to free Cervantes' work from its context within the histories of the European national literatures. Instead, he examines early modern Spanish cultural production as an antecedent to contemporary postcolonial literature, especially Latin American fiction of the past half century.

In order to construct his new context for reading Cervantes, Childers proceeds in three distinct phases. First, Cervantes' relation to the Western literary canon is reconfigured, detaching him from the realist novel and associating him, instead, with magic realism. Second, Childers provides an innovative reading of The Trial of Persiles and Sigismunda as a transnational romance, exploring cultural boundaries and the hybridization of identities. Finally, Childers explores traces of and similarities to Cervantes in contemporary fiction.

Theoretically eclectic and methodologically innovative, Transnational Cervantes opens up many avenues for research and debate, aiming to bring Cervantes' writings forward into the brave new world of our postcolonial age.