Twenty-First-Century Fiction A Critical Introduction [Paperback]

This critical introduction examines the formal and thematic features common among twenty-first-century writers from around the world.This is the first full-length study of the twenty-first century novel. It examines writers from around the world and identifies the formal and thematic features that their novels share, suggesting the outlines of a new phase in the genre's history.This is the first full-length study of the twenty-first century novel. It examines writers from around the world and identifies the formal and thematic features that their novels share, suggesting the outlines of a new phase in the genre's history.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 Bola?o. 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.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. & a compelling rel³T