London in Contemporary British Fiction - The City Beyond the City - Grand Format

Contemporary writers such as Peter Ackroyd, Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, A. S. Byatt, Andrea Levy, Ian McEwan, China Miéville, Will Self, Iain Sinclair and Zadie Smith have been registering both the changes to and the continuities of the social and cultural London landscape for years. This volume brings together critical interpretations of various vivid representations of the capital. Uniting these readings are themes such as the relationship between the country and the city ; the capacity of satirical forms to encompass the 'real London'; spatio-temporal transformations and emergences ; the relationship between multiculturalism and universalism ; the underground as the spatial equivalent of London's unconsciousness ; and the suburbs as a potential frontier of the future.
The volume creates a framework for new approaches to the representation of London required by the unprecedented social uncertainties of recent years : an invaluable contribution to studies of contemporary writing about London.