The New Atheist Novel - Philosophy, Fiction and Polemic after 9/11

The New Atheist Novel is the first study of a major new genre of contemporary fiction. It examines how Richard Dawkins''s so-called ''New Atheism'' movement has caught the imagination of four eminent modern novelists: Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Philip Pullman. For McEwan and his contemporaries, the contemporary novel represents a new front in the ideological war against religion, religious fundamentalism and, after 9/11, religious terror: the novel apparently stands for everything - freedom, individuality, rationality and even a secular experience of the transcendental - that religion seeks to overthrow. In this book, Bradley and Tate offer a genealogy of the New Atheist Novel: where it comes from, what needs it serves and, most importantly, where it may go in the future. What is it? How does it dramatise the war between belief and non-belief? To what extent does it represent a genuine ideological alternative to the religious imaginary or does it merely repeat it in secularised form? This fascinating study offers an incisive critique of this contemporary testament of literary belief and unbelief.

About the author

Arthur Bradley is Senior Lecturer in Literary and Cultural Studies at Lancaster University, UK. 

He is the author of Negative Theology and Modern French Philosophy; Derrida's Of Grammatology: A Philosophical Guide and (with Andrew Tate) The New Atheist Novel: Fiction, Philosophy and Polemic after 9/11.Andrew Tate is Professor in Literature, Religion and Aesthetics at Lancaster University, UK.

Product details

• Authors: Arthur Bradley, Arthur Tate Bradley, Bradley Arthur, Andrew Tate, Tate Andrew
• Assisted by: Emma Mason (Editor)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 11.02.2010
• EAN: 9780826446299
• ISBN: 978-0-8264-4629-9
• No. of pages: 160
• Series: New Directions in Religion and; New Directions in Religion and Literature; New Directions in Religion and
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, RELIGION / Atheism, RELIGION / Agnosticism, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Agnosticism and atheism, Agnosticism & Atheism, LITERARY CRITICISM / Novel as Form