Contemporary American Trauma Narratives - Hardcover

(A)n impressive survey of trauma narratives of diverse formal, generic, and stylistic qualities, whose main concern is to study literary representations of traumatic historical events in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. -Agata Preis-Smith, University of Warsaw, Polish Journal for American Studies, Vol 9

This book looks at the way writers present the effects of trauma in their work. It explores narrative devices, such as 'metafiction', as well as events in contemporary America, including 9/11, the Iraq War, and reactions to the Bush administration. Contemporary American authors who are discussed in depth include Carol Shields, Toni Morrison, Tim O'Brien, Mark Danielewski, Art Spiegelman, Jonathan Safran Foer, Anthony Swofford, Evan Wright, Paul Auster, Philip Roth, and Michael Chabon. Contemporary American Trauma Narratives offers a timely and dissenting intervention into debates about American writers' depiction of trauma and its after-effects.