Contemporary Literature

The Intersection of Class and Space in British Post-War Writing

Kitchen Sink Aesthetics

Simon Lee Centering on the British kitchen sink realism movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, specifically its documentation of the built environment’s influence on class consciousness, this book highlights the settings of a variety of novels, plays, and films, offering new ways of thinking about how spatial representation in cultural production sustains or intervenes in the process of social stratification.

UK January 2023 • US January 2023 • 240 pages HB 9781350193093 • £8500 / $11500 ePub 9781350193116 • £7650 / $10578 ePdf 9781350193109 • £7650 / $10578 Bloomsbury Academic

Brexlit

British Literature and the European Project

Kristian Shaw, University of Lincoln, UK Reading the tensions of the 2016 Brexit referendum - tensions over English, immigration and devolution - back into 21st-century British writing, BrexLit is the first in-depth study of how writers engaged with the issues and fractures that emerged in British culture before and after the referendum result Examining a wide-range of authors, including Ali Smith, Julian Barnes, China Mieville, Sanjeev Sahota, Nicola Barker and Zadie Smith as well as popular fiction by Andrew Marr and Stanley Johnson, Kristian Shaw explores how a new and urgent genre of post-Brexit fiction is beginning to emerge.

UK March 2023 • US March 2023 • 272 pages PB 9781350225817 • £2899 / $3995 Previously published in HB 9781350090835 ePub 9781350090859 • £8100 / $11265 ePdf 9781350090842 • £8100 / $11265 Series: 21st Century Genre Fiction • Bloomsbury Academic

Rethinking Contemporary British Women’s Writing

Realism, Feminism, Materialism

Emilie Walezak, Université Lumière Lyon 2, France This book addresses the reception of realist texts by contemporary women writers inherited from theories of social constructionism Offering close readings of wellknown British realist writers such as Pat Barker, A S Byatt, and Rose Tremain as well as of emerging millennial writers such as Sarah Hall and Zadie Smith, it redresses negative assumptions about realism’s alleged conservatism and normativity and uses the new directions of material and posthuman feminism to demonstrate the resurgence of realist writing in contemporary women’s writing

UK March 2023 • US March 2023 • 184 pages PB 9781350258549 • £2899 / $3995 Previously published in HB 9781350171350 ePub 9781350171374 • £7650 / $10578 ePdf 9781350171367 • £7650 / $10578 Bloomsbury Academic

Hyperbolic Realism

A Wild Reading of Pynchon's and Bolaño's Late Maximalist Fiction

Samir Sellami, Hamburg Institute for Social Research, Germany What comes after postmodernism in literature? Hyperbolic Realism engages the contradiction that while it remains impossible to present a full picture of the world, assessing reality from a planetary perspective seems now more than ever an ethical obligation for contemporary literature It examines the hyperbolic forms and features of Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day and Roberto Bolaño's 2666 – their discursive and material abundance, excessive fictionality, close intertwining of fantastic and historical genres, narrative doubt and spiraling uncertainty – which are deployed not as an escape from, but a plunge into reality

UK May 2023 • US May 2023 • 240 pages HB 9781501360497 • £8000 / $12000 ePub 9781501360503 • £7934 / $10800 ePdf 9781501360510 • £7934 / $10800 Bloomsbury Academic

New Horizons in Contemporary Writing Series

Bryan Cheyette, University of Reading, UK & Martin Paul Eve, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

Northern Irish Writing After the Troubles

Intimacies, Affects, Pleasures

Caroline Magennis, University of Salford, UK Since the Good Friday Agreement brought an end to the Troubles, Northern Ireland has undergone a literary renaissance, with a new generation of writers exploring innovative new literary forms In this book, Caroline Magennis explores this new generation of writers and how the postconflict period has lead them to a new engagement with intimacy and intimate life The book draws on new insights from Affect Studies to analyse the innovative forms that have accompanied this turn and includes interviews with some of the most compelling contemporary Northern Irish writers, including Lucy Caldwell, Jan Carson, Bernie McGill and Tara West

Thomas Pynchon and the Digital Humanities

Computational Approaches to Style

Erik Ketzan Providing an in-depth analysis of Pynchon’s style using methodologies from the digital humanities, including computational analysis, this book reveals new stylistic trends in Pynchon’s oeuvre It challenges critical assumptions regarding supposedly “Pynchonesque” stylistic features and presents the most extensive description thus far of Pynchon’s “late style” Examining a range of texts including Gravity's Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49 and Mason & Dixon, this book also contextualises his work alongside the works of Toni Morrison, David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo and Stephen King

UK February 2023 • US February 2023 • 248 pages PB 9781350254725 • £2899 / $3995 Previously published in HB 9781350074729 ePub 9781350074743 • £7650 / $10578 ePdf 9781350074736 • £7650 / $10578 Series: New Horizons in Contemporary Writing • Bloomsbury Academic UK March 2023 • US March 2023 • 288 pages PB 9781350211872 • £2899 / $3995 Previously published in HB 9781350211834 ePub 9781350211858 • £7650 / $10578 ePdf 9781350211841 • £7650 / $10578 Series: New Horizons in Contemporary Writing • Bloomsbury Academic