Contemporary British Fiction
- Course Code
- ENAM 0558
- Course Type
- Tutorials
- Subject Credit
- Course Availability
The British novel of today is as experimental, diverse and influential as it ever has been. This course will consider some of the major themes and authors of the period from around 1980 to the present day, but can be focused on any aspect that interests tutor and student.
Sample themes
- Realism and modernism
- Postmodernism
- Hyperrealism
- Self and society: family, class, art, politics, sport
- Feminism, queer theory, gender and sexuality
- Science, technology, and ethics
- Race, ethnicity, nationality, and culture
- Historical fiction
- Internationalism/Multiculturalism/Post-Colonialism
- History and trauma
- The primacy of narrative/imagination
Sample works
Peter Ackroyd: Hawksmoor
Martin Amis: London Fields, Time’s Arrow
JG Ballard: Crash
Pat Barker: The Ghost Road (from The Regeneration Trilogy)
Julian Barnes: Flaubert’s Parrot
AS Byatt: Possession
Angela Carter: The Bloody Chamber
Jonathan Coe: What a Carve Up!, The House of Sleep
Margaret Drabble: The Gates of Ivory (from The Radiant Way Trilogy)
Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker
Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming Pool Library
Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go; The Unconsoled
Doris Lessing: The Good Terrorist
Penelope Lively: Moon Tiger
Hanif Kureishi: Buddha of Suburbia
Ian McEwan: Black Dogs, Atonement
WG Sebald: Rings of Saturn
Muriel Spark: A Far Cry from Kensington
Graham Swift: Waterland: Shuttlecock; Ever After
Jeanette Winterson: The Passion; Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Films
Patrick Keiller: London; Robinson in Space; Robinson in Ruins
Mike Leigh: Naked
Stephen Frears: My Beautiful Laundrette