Twenty-First-Century British Fiction

The new millennium has been a period of rapid change and under this stimulus British fiction has evolved in new and sometimes unpredictable directions. It is the mercurial nature of its subject matter, which makes the study of contemporary British fiction both so dynamic and yet so challenging. New voices, forms and themes sometimes require the discarding of old critical frameworks and the creation of new. With this in mind we have endeavoured to create a truly forward-thinking collection that not only maps the journey of British fiction in the new millennium so far, but which also hints at the path ahead. The book includes discussion of The Cosmopolitan Novel, Comics, Neo-Victorian Fiction, Historical Fiction, London, Psychogeography, Environmental Crisis, Pastoral, Digital Technologies, Gaming, Cybernetics, Uncreativity, Second-Person Narratives, Oral Culture, David Mitchell, Gordon Burn, David Peace, Andrew O'Hagan, Hilary Mantel, Scarlett Thomas, China Miéville, Salman Rushdie, Indra Sinha, Jeff Noon, and Ali Smith.