The 9/11 Novel: A Critical Study of an Evolving Canon

This is a comprehensive study of the first decade of literary representations of 9/11, moving from Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers (2003) to Amy Waldman’s The Submission (2012). It traces the way literature has dealt with an event that continues to resonate prominently in the American imagination and beyond, and argues that the corpus of literary fiction discussing 9/11 is characterised by a fundamental sense of conflictedness, a series of stark dichotomies and the tension between trauma and mourning and political imperatives or the rhetoric of epoch and nostalgia. Additionally, this book assesses an equally divided body of criticism on the 9/11 novel and locates Hurricane Katrina as a turning point in the politicisation of 9/11. The work offers in-depth analyses of texts that have historicised 9/11 and shaped the way we understand this key moment in American and world history.