Book excerpt: This book features original essays by leading academics and emerging researchers written in honour of a legal comparatist who, over the course of four decades, has played a major role in comparative law’s development: Pier Giuseppe Monateri. Rather than being just a celebrative work without analytical appeal, this book makes a significant contribution to the comparative legal literature by exploring key comparative law themes and recent developments in the field. Reflecting Monateri’s vast expertise, innovative thinking, and truly global network, the volume is divided into five thematic areas of both scholarly and practical significance: Comparative Law and Its Methods; Comparative Private Law; Law and Literature; The Politics and Ontology of Law; Comparative Law & Economics. Discussing novel case-studies as well as exploring Monateri’s importance to the comparative enterprise through various trajectories of inquiry – for example, normative, doctrinal, empirical, critical – this book takes a fundamental and much-needed step towards the establishment of comparative law as a fully-fledged academic discipline and professional practice. Addressing the current status and future direction of comparative law, this book will appeal to legal comparativists, as well as students and scholars with broader interests in the nature of legal cultures.