English Fiction Since 1984: Narrating a Nation

ISBN: 0230008550

Author: Finney, B.

Condition: New

This book analyses in depth one key novel written by each of eleven English writers who dominated the 1980s and 1990s. Between them they changed the shape of British fiction with their innovative methods of narration and their appeal to an international readership. Many of them looked abroad for inspiration - Amis admired Bellow and Nabokov, Barnes looked to Flaubert and the French novelists, while Rushdie was raised as a trans-national citizen of the world. The vision of these writers was global compared to the provincial outlook of most British novelists since World War Two. This widening of the British novel's interest ran parallel to Britain's embrace of multinational capitalism under Margaret Thatcher. The period of late modernity compelled these writers to seek out new ways of narrating it. Confronted with a world threatened by nuclear destruction, most of these novelists rejected the notion of a unified personality and played with the poststructuralist notion of multiple selves. The book is divided into three sections: History, Modernity and Metafiction (Ackroyd, Barnes, Amis, Byatt McEwan); National Cultures and Hybrid Narrative Modes (Rushdie, Kureishi, Ishiguro); and Narrative Constructions of Identity (Carter, Winterson, Swift).