21st Century US Historical Fiction

'Working usefully against contemporary critical trends, Ruth Maxey's collection posits similarities between the historical novel and postmodern narratives. Each of the essays is enlightening; each persuades. A must-have collection.'

   -  Linda Wagner-Martin, Frank Borden Hanes Professor of English & Comparative Literature, The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, USA.

This new collection examines important US historical fiction published since 2000. Exploring historical novels by established American writers such as Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, E.L. Doctorow, Chang-rae Lee, James McBride, Susan Choi, and George Saunders, the book also includes chapters on first-time novelists. Individual essays in 21st Century US Historical Fiction: Contemporary Responses to the Past tackle prominent and provocative new novels: for example, recent Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction by Anthony Doerr, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Colson Whitehead. Interrogating such key themes as war, race, sexuality, trauma and childhood; notions of genre and periodization; and recent theorizations of historical fiction, scholars from the United States, Canada, Britain and Ireland analyze an emerging canon of contemporary historical fiction by an ethno-racially diverse range of major American writers.