"Caren Irr's survey of more than 125 novels outlines the dramatic resurgence of the American political novel in the twenty-first century. She explores the writings of Chris Abani, Susan Choi, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Díaz, Dave Eggers, Jeffrey Eugenides, Aleksandar Hemon, Hari Kunzru, Dinaw Mengestu, Norman Rush, Gary Shteyngart, and others as they rethink stories of migration, the Peace Corps, nationalism and neoliberalism, revolution, and the expatriate...

Since the 9/11 attacks, many writers have represented its aftermath with varying degrees of success. 'Out of the Blue' focuses on narratives that move beyond patriotic clichés and cheap sensationalism and provides new insight into the emotions and ethics of these traumatic events - and what it means to depict them.

"A literary study of mainstream and science fiction novels shows the contest between the reactionary impulse of the post-apocalyptic mode and the progressive impetus for a new world"--

"These seventeen essays by celebrated writers of color start a more inclusive conversation about storytelling and encourage readers and writers to re-evaluate the codes and conventions that have shaped their assumptions about how fiction should be written. Edited by Deepa Anappara, author of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, and Taymour Soomro, author of Other Names for Love, this anthology features writers from around the world, from a diversity of...

"Few previous periods in the history of American literature could rival the richness of the postmodern era - the diversity of its authors, the complexity of its ideas and visions, and the multiplicity of its subjects and forms. This volume offers an authoritative, comprehensive, and accessible guide to the American fiction of this remarkable period. It traces the development of postmodern American fiction over the past half-century and explores its...

"Mere Reading argues for a return to the foundations of literary study established nearly a century ago. Following a recent period dominated by symptomatic analyses of fictional texts (new historicist, Marxist, feminist, identity-political), Lee Clark Mitchell joins a burgeoning neo-formalist movement in challenging readers to embrace a rationale for literary criticism that has too long been ignored-a neglect that corresponds, perhaps not coincidentally,...

"Who writes novels about war? For nearly a century after World War I, the answer was simple: soldiers who had been there. The assumption that a person must have experienced war in the flesh in order to write about it in fiction was taken for granted by writers, reviewers, critics, and even scholars. Contemporary American fiction tells a different story. Less than half of the authors of contemporary war novels are veterans. And that's hardly the only...

"With the supposed shortening of our collective attention spans, what future is there for long narrative fiction in the age of the internet? Contemporary Fictions of Attention maps out a shared interest in attention within 21st-century fiction and connects this interest to a series of debates surrounding ethics, work, the everyday, boredom and entertainment, as well as a broader context for the future of the book, fiction and reading itself in an...