The question of how narratives actually do the work of worldbuilding transcends disciplines from cosmology to philosophy digital culture popular culture and literary theory. In A New Anatomy of Storyworlds MarieLaure Ryan investigates the narratological importance of the concept of world in its various manifestations. She uses a wide array of worksfrom Sokals hoax to Maus from Saussure to Barthes from Kafka to virtual realityto interrogate key narratological concepts. By revisiting and redefining concepts such as narrator plot character fictionality mimesis and diegesis Ryan reexamines the major controversies that have enlivened narratology Does narrative necessarily involve a narrator Is the notion of implied author useful Do texts that challenge our experience of the real world require a different narratology Is the distinction between fictional and factual narratives gradual or binary Ultimately Ryan grounds narratology in the concept of world to propose an alternative to the rhetorical feminist unnatural and cognitive approaches that currently dominate the field thus broadening the frame through which we view story and worldbuilding.