Twenty-First-Century Fiction
A Critical Introduction
1st Edition
Published on 23. August 2013
978-1-107-23999-9 (ISBN)
Description
The widespread use of electronic communication at the dawn of the twenty-first century has created a global context for our interactions, transforming the ways we relate to the world and to one another. This critical introduction reads the fiction of the past decade as a response to our contemporary predicament - one that draws on new cultural and technological developments to challenge established notions of democracy, humanity, and national and global sovereignty. Peter Boxall traces formal and thematic similarities in the novels of contemporary writers including Don DeLillo, Margaret Atwood, J. M. Coetzee, Marilynne Robinson, Cormac McCarthy, W. G. Sebald and Philip Roth, as well as David Mitchell, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dave Eggers, Ali Smith, Amy Waldman and Roberto Bolano. In doing so, Boxall maps new territory for scholars, students and interested readers of today's literature by exploring how these authors narrate shared cultural life in the new century.
Reviews / Votes
'... a compelling reading of 21st-century novels ... this is a refreshingly current and theoretically nuanced study. Boxall makes a persuasive and always readable case for contemporary fiction in relation to its social, cultural, and political contexts ... Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.' J. Young, Choice '... a timely and highly welcome contribution to this slowly emerging field of twenty-first-century studies.' Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 'In Twenty-First-Century Fiction ... Boxall traverses a vast terrain, offering compelling close readings of more than a dozen novelists and connecting them with dozens more from around the world. His prose is lush and lyrical, his readings subtle and intellectually demanding. Sentence by sentence, both books are pleasure-reads for anyone who cares deeply about literary criticism.' Andrew Lanham, Notes and QueriesMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
3 Halftones, unspecified
File size
3,95 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-107-23999-9 (9781107239999)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
06/2013
Cambridge University Press
€36.80
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Book
06/2013
Cambridge University Press
€114.30
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Peter Boxall is Professor of English at the University of Sussex. He has published widely on modern and contemporary literature, including the recent books Don DeLillo: The Possibility of Fiction (2006), Since Beckett: Contemporary Writing in the Wake of Modernism (2009) and 1001 Books You Must Read before You Die, 5th edition (2012).
Content
Acknowledgements; List of illustrations; Introduction: twenty-first-century fiction; 1. Late culture in the early twenty-first century; 2. Inheriting the past: literature and historical memory in the twenty-first century; 3. The limits of the human; 4. A curious knot: terrorism, radicalism, the avant-garde; 5. Sovereignty, democracy, globalization; Bibliography; Index.
