The 2000s: A Decade of Contemporary British Fiction

Description

How did social, cultural and political events in Britain during the 2000s shape contemporary British fiction? The means of publishing, buying and reading fiction changed dramatically between 2000 and 2010. This volume explores how the socio-political and economic turns of the decade, bookended by the beginning of a millennium and an economic crisis, transformed the act of writing and reading. Through consideration of, among other things, the treatment of neuroscience, violence, the historical and youth subcultures in recent fiction, the essays in this collection explore the complex and still powerful relation between the novel and the world in which it is written, published and read. This major literary assessment of the fiction of the 2000s covers the work of newer voices such as Monica Ali, Mark Haddon, Tom McCarthy, David Peace and Zadie Smith as well as those more established, such as Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel and Ian McEwan making it an essential contribution to reading, defining and understanding the decade. Cover page Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page Contents Contributors Series Editors’ Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Fiction of the 2000s Political Contexts, Seeing the Contemporary, and the End(s) of Postmodernism Works cited 1 Literary History of the Decade Fictions from the Borderlands Caravan on the borderland: Patrick McCabe’s Call Me the Breeze An articulate anger: Niall Griffiths’ Sheepshagger ‘An aggrieved act of witnessing’: David Peace’s GB84 The metropolitan men: Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani Works cited 2 Special Topic 1 Subcultural Fictions: Youth Subcultures in Twenty-first-century British Fiction Gautam Malkani, Londonstani (by way of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth) John King, Skinheads (2008) Alex Wheatle, East of Acre Lane (2001) Stewart Home, Tainted Love (2005) Conclusions Notes Works cited 3 Special Topic 2 Translating Neuroscience: Fictions of the Brain in the 2000s Seeing is believing Lost (and found) in translation What remains Notes Works cited 4 Postcolonial and Diasporic Voices Contemporary British Fiction in an Age of Transnational Terror Black British writing in the 2000s Asian British writing in the 2000s Conflicting cosmopolitanisms in twenty-first-century British fiction How the other half dies: Martin Amis’ ‘The Last Days of Muhammad Atta’ (2006) How the other half lives: Ian McEwan’s Saturday (2005) It’s all kicking off : Chris Cleave’s Incendiary (2005) Against 9/11 exceptionalism: Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers (2004) and Leila Aboulela’s Minaret (2005) Magical Realism in an age of terror: David Dabydeen’s Molly and the Muslim Stick (2008) Notes Works cited 5 Historical Representations Reality Effects: The Historical Novel and the Crisis of Fictionality in the First Decade of the Twenty-first Century ‘He, Cromwell . . .’: New reality effects Atonement : Multiple reality effects The Red Riding Quartet: Fictionality as the real Note Works cited 6 Generic Discontinuities and Variations Works cited 7 International Contexts 1 The American Reception of British Fiction in the 2000s Works cited 8 International Contexts 2 From Multicultural Enthusiasm to the ‘Failure of Multiculturalism’: British Multi-ethnic Fiction in an International Frame Note Works cited Timeline of Works Timeline of National Events Timeline of International Events Biographies of Writers Index