21st-Century British Gothic - by Emily Horton (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In this ... re-casting of the genre and its received canon, Emily Horton explores fictional investments in the Gothic within contemporary British literature, revealing how such concepts as the monstrous, spectral, and uncanny work to illuminate the insecure, uneven and precarious experience of 21st century life. Reading contemporary works of Gothic fiction by Helen Oyeyemi, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sarah Moss, Patrick McGrath, and M.R. Carey alongside writers not previously grouped under this umbrella--such as Brian Chikwava, Chloe Aridjis and Mohsin Hamid--Horton illuminates the way the Gothic has been engaged and reread by these contemporary writers to address the many cultural anxieties invoked living under neocolonial and neoliberal governance, including terrorism, migration, homelessness, racism, and climate change"--

Book Synopsis

In this innovative re-casting of the genre and its received canon, Emily Horton explores fictional investments in the Gothic within contemporary British literature, revealing how such concepts as the monstrous, spectral and uncanny work to illuminate the insecure, uneven and precarious experience of 21st-century life. Reading contemporary works of Gothic fiction by Helen Oyeyemi, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sarah Moss, Patrick McGrath and M.R. Carey alongside writers not previously grouped under this umbrella, including Brian Chikwava, Chloe Aridjis and Mohsin Hamid, Horton illuminates the way the Gothic has been engaged and reread by contemporary writers to address the cultural anxieties invoked living under neocolonial and neoliberal governance, including terrorism, migration, homelessness, racism, and climate change.

Marshalling new modes of diasporic and cross-disciplinary critical theory concerned with the violent dimensions of contemporary life, this book sets the Gothic aesthetics in such works as White is for Witching, Double Vision, Never Let Me Go, The Wasted Vigil and Ghost Wall against a backdrop of key events in the 21st-century. Drawing connections between moments of anxiety, such as 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, ecological disaster, the refugee crisis, Brexit, the pandemic, and the Gothic, Horton demonstrates how British literature mediates transnational experiences of trauma and horror, while also addressing local and national insecurities and preoccupations. As a result, 21st-Century British Gothic can tests geographical, psychological, cultural, and aesthetic borders to expose an often spectralised experience of human and planetary vulnerability and speaks back against the brutality of global capitalism.

Review Quotes

"Takes readers on a spirited tour through the real and metaphorical bogeymen of the past forty years." --The Times Literary Supplement

"Incisive, richly informed and beautifully written, this book is a major contribution to Gothic studies. It will be essential reading for anyone wanting to deepen their understanding of new directions in Gothic fiction in the twenty-first century. Highly recommended." --Jago Morrison, Professor of English, Brunel University London, UK

About the Author

Emily Horton is Senior Lecturer in English at Brunel University, UK. She is author of Contemporary Crisis Fictions (2014), and co-editor of Ali Smith (Bloomsbury, 2013), The 1980s: A Decade in Contemporary British Fiction, (Bloomsbury, 2014)The 2010s: A Decade in Contemporary British Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2024).