The Contemporary British Novel Since 2000 - by James Acheson (Paperback)

About the Book

The Contemporary British Novel Since 2000 examines 20 key novelists as well as introducing and applying the terms 'realist', 'postmodernist', 'historical' and 'postcolonialist' against them.

Book Synopsis

The Contemporary British Novel Since 2000 examines 20 key novelists as well as introducing and applying the terms 'realist', 'postmodernist', 'historical' and 'postcolonialist' against them.

From the Back Cover

'Editor James Acheson's latest symposium of essays by leading scholars in the field, The Contemporary British Novel Since 2000, takes the reader forward from the point where his earlier collection, The Contemporary British Novel Since 1980, left off. Since the beginning of the century, indeed, a number of gifted British novelists have come to the fore, and the present volume deals with the most widely read and best known amongst them. By challenging the reader's concept of what a novel should be like, these novelists are breaking new ground. In their readings of such works, James Acheson and his colleagues shed valuable light on a vibrant, ever-changing literary scene.' John Fletcher, University of East Anglia Focuses on the novels published since 2000 by eighteen major British novelists The Contemporary British Novel Since 2000 is in five parts, with the first part examining the work of four particularly well-known and highly regarded twenty-first-century writers: Ian McEwan, David Mitchell, Hilary Mantel and Zadie Smith. It is with reference to each of these novelists in turn that the terms 'realist', 'postmodernist', 'historical' and 'postcolonialist' fiction are introduced, while in the remaining four parts, other novelists are discussed and the meaning of the terms amplified. From the start it is emphasised that these terms and others often mean different things to different novelists, and that the complexity of their novels often obliges us to discuss their work with reference to more than one of the terms. The works of the following writers are also discussed: Maggie O'Farrell, Sarah Hall, A. L. Kennedy, Alan Warner, Ali Smith, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kate Atkinson, Salman Rushdie, Adam Foulds, Sarah Waters, James Robertson, Mohsin Hamid, Andrea Levy and Aminatta Forna. James Acheson is former Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. He is author of Samuel Beckett's Artistic Theory and Practice: Criticism, Drama, Early Fiction (1997) and John Fowles (1998). [Note, cover image credit changed since brief] Cover image: The Lost Woods no. 2, Jamie Kinroy, 2014 Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN [PPC] 978-1-4744-0372-6 ISBN [cover} 978-1-4744-0373-3 Barcode

Review Quotes

Acheson's edited volume will prove invaluable for a wide audience including the erudite reader, students, and teachers of contemporary British fiction, as well as research scholars in this field.--Éva Szabó, University of Debrecen "Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies"

Editor James Acheson's latest selection of essays by leading scholars in the field, The Contemporary British Novel Since 2000, takes the reader forward from the point where his earlier collection, The Contemporary British Novel Since 1980, left off. Since the beginning of the century, indeed, a number of gifted British novelists have come to the fore, and the present volume deals with the most widely read and best known amongst them. By challenging the reader's concept of what a novel should be like, these novelists are breaking new ground. In their readings of such works, James Acheson and his colleagues shed valuable light on a vibrant, ever-changing literary scene.--John Fletcher, University of East Anglia

About the Author

James Acheson is former Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. He is author of Samuel Beckett's Artistic Theory and Practice: Criticism, Drama, Early Fiction, and John Fowles, and is coeditor (with Sarah C.E. Ross) of The Contemporary British Novel Since 1980.