This is the ideal guide for those studying contemporary fiction for the first time. The last twenty-five years have seen an explosion of new developments in the English language novel. Because of its enormous diversity, however, the field of contemporary fiction studies can appear complex and confusing. Jago Morrison's Contemporary Fiction provides a much-needed accessible introduction to the field. He enables readers to navigate the subject by introducing the key areas of debate and offers in-depth discussions of many of the most significant texts. Writers examined include: Ian McEwan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jeanette Winterson, Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Angela Carter, Hanif Kureishi, Buchi Emecheta and Alice Walker. Tackling issues such as history, time and narrative, the body, race and ethnicity, this represents an important contribution to the understanding of contemporary fiction.

Acknowledgements; Part One : Frameworks, Introduction - After the End of the Novel; 1. History and Post-histories 2. Time and Narrative 3. Bodies, Genders 4. Writing and Race; Part Two: Readings, 5. Unravelling Time in Ian McEwan's Fiction 6. Memory Blocks: The Fictional Autobiography of Maxine Hong Kingston 7. Jeanette Winterson: Re-membering the Body 8. Toni Morrison: Blackness and the Historical Imagination 9. Imagining Nations: Salman Rushdie's Counter-Histories 10. Angela Carter: Genealogies 11. After 'Race': Hanif Kureishi's Writing 12. Rewriting Ethnicity in Buchi Emecheta's Fiction 13. Writing as Activism: Alice Walker; Students' Guide to Further Reading; Bibliography