Postmodern fiction presents a challenge to the reader: instead of enjoying it passively, the reader has to work to understand its meanings, to think about what fiction is, and to question their own responses. Yet this very challenge makes postmodern writing so much fun to read and rewarding to study. Unlike most introductions to postmodernism and fiction, this book places the emphasis on literature rather than theory. It introduces the most prominent British and American novelists associated with postmodernism, from the 'pioneers', Beckett, Borges and Burroughs, to important post-war writers...

Postmodernism and the Contemporary Novel: A Reader is the first book to collect together the most important contributions to the theory of the postmodern novel over the last forty years and to guide readers through the complex questions and wide-ranging debates: what are its characteristics? Which novels and authors belong to the category? Does it even deserve to be a category on its own? From which traditions does it emerge? How does it relate to previous forms of the novel and to other aspects of postmodern culture?While discussion of the contemporary novel has been dominated by the...

From Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade to Jake Gittes, private eyes have made for some of the most memorable characters in cinema. We often view these detectives as lone wolves who confront and try to make sense of a violent and chaotic modern world. Bran Nicol challenges this stereotype in The Private Eye and offers a fresh take on this iconic character and the film noir genre. Nicol traces the history of private eye movies from the influential film noirs of the 1940s to 1970s neonoir cinema, whose slow and brilliant decline gave way to the fading of detectives into movie mythology today....