The 2010s

A Decade of Contemporary British Fiction

Emily Horton, Nick Bentley, Nick Hubble, Philip Tew, Emily Horton, Nick Bentley, Nick Hubble, Philip Tew

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781350268210
• eBook ISBN: 9781350268234
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This volume relates the British fiction of the decade to the contexts in which it was written and received in order to examine and explain contemporary trends, such as the rise of a new working-class fiction, the ongoing development of separate national literatures of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and shifts in modes of attention and reading.

From the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, the 2010s have been a decade of an ongoing crisis which has penetrated every area of everyday life. Internationally, there has been an ongoing shift of global power from the US to China, and events and developments such as the election of Donald Trump as US President, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, the rise of the populist right across Europe and very gradually the incipient effects variously of AI. Nationally, there has been a decade of austerity economics punctuated by divisive referendums on Scottish independence and whether Britain should leave or remain in the EU.

Balancing critical surveys with in-depth readings of work by authors who have helped define this turbulent decade, including Nicola Barker, Anna Burns, Jonathan Coe, Alys Conran, Bernadine Evaristo, Mohsin Hamid, James Kelman, James Robertson, Kamila Shamsie, Ali Smith, Zadie Smith and Adam Thirlwell, among others, this volume illustrates exactly how their key themes and concerns fit within the social and political circumstances of the decade.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Series Editors’ Preface
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Fiction of the 2010s in the Context of a Country in Transition
• 1 Fictions of the Break-Up
• 2 Fiction in the Age of Distraction: Reading and Attention in the 2010s
• 3 Border Crossings: Diasporic British Fiction of the 2010s
• 4 ‘Defining it is a Struggle’: Working-Class Fiction in the 2010s
• 5 What’s To-day? Politics and Typography in Ali Smith’s Decade
• 6 The ‘Teenie’ Novels of Jonathan Coe: Intertextuality, Satire, Parody, Farce and Irony
• 7 ‘The English Problem’: Reading the Body Politic in Post-Brexit Fictions
• 8 Inexhaustible Literature? Contemporary Experimental Approaches in Literature
• 9 Speculative Fiction of the 2010s
• 10 The Neo-mythological Novel: Re-writing the Epic in Contemporary British Fiction
• Timeline of Works
• Timeline of National Events
• Timeline of International Events
• Biographies of Writers
• Index
• Copyright