Toward the Geopolitical Novel

U.S. Fiction in the Twenty-First Century

Caren Irr

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9780231536318
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Literature

Caren Irr's survey of more than 125 novels outlines the dramatic resurgence of the American political novel in the twenty-first century. She explores the writings of Chris Abani, Susan Choi, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Díaz, Dave Eggers, Jeffrey Eugenides, Aleksandar Hemon, Hari Kunzru, Dinaw Mengestu, Norman Rush, Gary Shteyngart, and others as they rethink stories of migration, the Peace Corps, nationalism and neoliberalism, revolution, and the expatriate experience. Taken together, these innovations define a new literary form: the geopolitical novel. More cosmopolitan and socially critical than domestic realism, the geopolitical novel provides new ways of understanding crucial political concepts to meet the needs of a new century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Resurgence of the Political Novel
• 1. From Routes to Routers: The Digital Migrant Novel
• 2. The Anxious American: Political Thrillers and the Peace Corps Fugue
• 3. Neoliberal Allegories: The Space of Home in Contemporary International Fiction
• 4. Ideology, Terror, and Apocalypse: The New Novel of Revolution
• 5. Toward the World Novel: Genre Shifts in Twenty-First-Century Expatriate Fiction
• Notes
• Primary Works
• Bibliography
• Index