The Novel and Europe: Imagining the Continent in Post-1945 Fiction

The Novel and Europe examines the ways in which fiction has addressed the continent since the Second World War. Drawing on novelists from Europe and elsewhere, the volume analyses the literary response to seven dominant concerns (ideas of Europe, conflict, borders, empire, unification, migration and marginalisation), offering a ground-breaking study of how modern and contemporary writers have participated in the European debate. The sixteen essays view the chosen writers, not as representatives of national literatures, but as participants in transcontinental discussion that has occurred across borders, cultures and languages. In doing so, the contributors raise questions about the forms of power operating across and radiating from Europe, challenging both the institutionalised divisions of the Cold War and the triumphalist narrative of continental unity currently being written in Brussels.