Twenty-First Century Fictions of Terrorism
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About this book
- Analyses a movement way from the event-based narratives of terrorism exemplified by the ‘9/11 novel’
- Discusses narratives of terrorism that point to systemic and institutional violence
- Intervenes in debates about terrorism and the novel of terrorism
Examining novels by celebrated authors, some neglected and some brand new texts, Arin Keeble offers a detailed analysis of the ways novels from around the world have represented terrorism in the early twenty-first century. Over five chapters, he uncovers a movement away from event-based narratives toward depictions of terrorism as a violent symptom or feature of twenty-first century world-systems and neoliberalism. Beginning with the early literary response to 9/11 and the 9/11 novel genre, the book moves through more recent depictions of the endless ‘war on terror’, state terror, white nationalist terror and historical narratives of terror that resonate in the current political climate. In doing so, it examines the changing ways literature has sought to make sense of both the reasons why terrorism occurs and the effects it has on victims, survivors and international and intercultural relations.
Reviews
Twenty-First Century Fictions of Terrorism is a highly engaging synthesis that encourages readers to think beyond the events of 9/11 and their aftermath, and to place the fiction of terrorism in a more expansive set of conceptual frameworks.
Looking beyond the exceptionalism of 9/11, Keeble's theoretical interventions and meticulous close readings offer compelling contexts of trauma and structural violence demonstrating how terror gets framed between and across social and cultural institutions of government, media and industry.
A masterful synthetic account of how the fiction of the first quarter of the century has wrestled with the concept of terrorism. Keeble has written both a timely study and one that will influence literary histories of the period for years to come.
Table of contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: From Traumatic Rupture to Systemic Crisis in the Twenty-First Century Novel of Terrorism
1. Revisiting the Anglophone 9/11 Novel: Domesticity, Metafiction and Exceptionalism
2. Writing the 'Clash of Civilizations’: Racism, Difference and Terrorism
3. The Novel of Terrorism and the War on Terror
4. Contemporary Historical Novels of Terrorism
5. Genre, Policing and Terrorism
Conclusion: New Event-Based Narratives of Terrorism
Index