The Postmodern City of Dreadful Night: The image of the city in the works of Martin Amis and Ian McEwan - Softcover

The city, especially London, is undoubtedly one of the favourite themes in British fiction of the last two decades of the twentieth century. Writers such as Ackroyd, Sinclair, Self, Kureishi, Carter and others have expressed their attitude to the metropolis in their novels, short stories, non- fiction and film scripts. The diversity and versatility of the urban milieu are reflected by these writers? multifarious treatments of the theme, and so the city comes to life again and again in both its real as well as fictional forms. Moreover, these two forms become hardly distinguishable and thus mutually interchangeable as the realistic aspects of the city perpetually intertwine with the fictitious. This work attempts to show how the city, as both theme and setting, is used by Martin Amis and Ian McEwan in their selected novels written, with one exception, during the 1980s and 90s. In order to provide theoretical and historical contexts, chapters providing a brief outline of the city as the writer?s object of interest since the late nineteenth century and dealing with Amis?s and McEwan?s characteristic narrative strategies are also included.

Petr Chalupský, Ph.D.: Awarded his Doctoral Degree from the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, Charles University, Prague. Assistant Lecturer in English Literature at the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, Charles University, Prague.