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This volume relates the British fiction of the decade to the contexts in which it was written and received in order to examine and explain contemporary trends, such as the rise of a new working-class fiction, the ongoing development of separate national literatures of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and shifts in modes of attention and reading. From the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, the 2010s have been a decade of an ongoing crisis which has penetrated every area of everyday life. Internationally, there has been an ongoing shift of global power from the US to China, and events and developments such as the election of Donald Trump as US President, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, the rise of the populist right across Europe and very gradually the incipient effects variously of AI. Nationally, there has been a decade of austerity economics punctuated by divisive referendums on Scottish independence and whether Britain should leave or remain in the EU. Balancing critical surveys with in-depth readings of work by authors who have helped define this turbulent decade, including Nicola Barker, Anna Burns, Jonathan Coe, Alys Conran, Bernadine Evaristo, Mohsin Hamid, James Kelman, James Robertson, Kamila Shamsie, Ali Smith, Zadie Smith and Adam Thirlwell, among others, this volume illustrates exactly how their key themes and concerns fit within the social and political circumstances of the decade.>
About the author
Emily Horton is Senior Lecturer in English at Brunel University, UK. Her research interests include contemporary world literature, specializing in trauma and affect theory, genre and popular fiction, and fictional explorations of globalization and transnationalism. Her monograph, Contemporary Crisis Fictions, was published in 2014, and she has also co-edited the following volumes: The 2010s: A Decade in Contemporary British Fiction, with Nick Bentley, Philip Tew and Nick Hubble (Bloomsbury, 2024); The 1980s: A Decade in Contemporary British Fiction, with Philip Tew and Leigh Wilson (Bloomsbury, 2014); and Ali Smith, with Monica Germanà (Bloomsbury, 2013).Nick Bentley is Senior Lecturer in English at Keele University, UK.Nick Hubble is Professor of Modern and Contemporary English at Brunel University London, UK and the co-editor of The Science Fiction Handbook (2013), The 1970s (2014), The 1990s (2015), The 2000s (2015), The 1950s (2018), The 1930s (2021), The 2010s (2024) and London in Contemporary British Fiction (2016) all published by Bloomsbury.Philip Tew is Professor of English (Post-1900 Literature) at Brunel University, UK, Director of the Brunel Centre for Contemporary Writing and Director of the UK Network for Modern Fiction Studies. His many publications as both author and editor include Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond (Bloomsbury, 2013) and (co-edited with Emily Horton and Leigh Wilson) The 1980s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2014).
