Contemporary British Fiction Paperback - 2008

From the rear cover

This series provides accessible yet provocative introductions to a wide range of literatures. The volumes will initiate and deepen the reader's understanding of key literary movements, periods and genres, and consider debates that inform the past, present and future of literary study. Resources such as glossaries of key terms and details of archives and internet sites are also provided, making each volume a comprehensive critical guide. This critical guide introduces major novelists and themes in British fiction from 1975 to 2005. It engages with concepts such as postmodernism, feminism, gender and the postcolonial, and examines the place of fiction within broader debates in contemporary culture. A comprehensive Introduction provides a historical context for the study of contemporary British fiction by detailing significant social, political and cultural events. This is followed by five chapters organised around the core themes: Narrative Forms; Contemporary Ethnicities; Gender and Sexuality; History, Memory and Writing; and Narratives of Cultural Space. Key Features o Introduces the major themes and trends in British fiction over the last 30 years o Analyses a range of writers and texts including Brick Lane by Monica Ali, London Fields by Martin Amis, The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter, Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby, The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi, Atonement by Ian McEwan, Shame by Salman Rushdie, Downriver by Iain Sinclair, White Teeth by Zadie Smith, and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson o Presents a variety of critical and cultural perspectives essential for studying contemporary British fiction o Provides essential resources for further reading and research Nick Bentley is Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature at Keele University. He is the author of Radical Fictions: The British Novel in the 1950s (2007) and editor of British Fiction of the 1990s (2005).