Moving beyond a survey approach, this collection explores British fiction’s place among the cultural shifts and headline events of four distinctive decades. From the collapse of communism, through the rise of Thatcher to the shifts in global power, each volume evaluates the impact of social, cultural and political history on the fiction of the respective period. Breaking British fiction into its four constituent decades, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s and the 2000s and using social, cultural and political contexts to understand its chronology means changing literary themes are properly accounted for and traditional readings opened up. Alongside the national reception, the series looks closely at how British fiction has been received internationally. Approaching the subject from the perspective of its disciplinary formation, The Decades Series is a crucial reference point for the progressive development of contemporary British fiction, not only a literary and cultural phenomenon, but as an academic field.