Literature and The Contemporary: Fictions and Theories of the Present

Aims to provide evidence of the way in which the literature of the 1990s is constantly engaging in questions of memory and history and the representation of time in the present day. Included are essays on key texts of the 1990s, from Graham Swift’s Last Orders to Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres . The text addresses central contemporary issues such as the politics of memory, colonial legacies, women’s time and racial and sexual identities in the 1990s.