This path-breaking study complicates the simplistic narratives of revenge and wronged innocence commonly used to make sense of the attacks and to justify the US response. Each novel discussed seeks to interrogate and analyse a discourse typically dominated by consent, belligerence and paranoia. Together, the collected essays suggest the value of literature as an effective critical intervention in the very fraught political aftermath of the ‘war on terror’.
This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.
Fiona Tolan is a Senior Lecturer in English at Liverpool John Moores University. She specialises in contemporary British and Canadian writing, and is author of Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction. She is Associate Editor of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.
Stephen Morton is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Southampton. He is currently completing ‘Colonial States of Emergency’ for Liverpool University Press, and has published articles in Textual Practice, Wasafiri, Public Culture, New Formations, Ariel, and Interventions.
Anastasia Valassopoulos is Lecturer in World Literature at the University of Manchester. Her main area of research is the postcolonial literature and culture of the Middle East and North Africa. She is also interested in the wider cultural production and reception of Arab women’s film and music. She is the author of Contemporary Arab Women Writers (Routledge, 2007) and has published work in Research in African Literatures and Critical Survey as well as numerous edited collections.
Robert Spencer is Lecturer in Postcolonial Literature and Postcolonial Culture at the University of Manchester. His main research interests are in postcolonial fiction and poetry (especially African and Irish writing). He is the author of Cosmopolitan Criticism and Postcolonial Literature (forthcoming, Palgrave) and has published work in Interventions, New Formations, Postcolonial Studies and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing, as well as several edited collections.