Kaye Mitchell

Kaye Mitchell provides students with a comprehensive introduction to Kennedy's work, placing her fiction and non-fiction in a clear historical and theoretical context.

Alison Louise Kennedy

Sebastian Groes

Jeannette Baxter

Peter Childs

Roberta Garret

Liam Harrison

A critically acclaimed and controversial contemporary British author, Rachel Cusk's work offers a striking representation of trends in modern writing through her rejection of the conventional trappings of realism and her pushing the limits between fiction and life writing. Rachel Cusk: Contemporary Critical Pesrpectives is a critical guide to Cusk's broad oeuvre, covering such novels as Saving Agnes, A Country Life, and Second Place among others; her 'autofictional' Outline trilogy; and her nonfiction works such as A Life's Work, The Last Supper, Aftermath and the Coventry essays. Substantial and wide-ranging, this book provides an accessible and lucid introduction to Cusk's work, exploring such themes as gender relations, class dynamics, maternal identity, personal and creative freedom, and calls upon critical fields from gender studies to biographical writing studies. The book then rounds off with an in-depth interview with Rachel Cusk herself about her writing and experiences. Mapping the formal and stylistic shift across her career and locating them within their specific contexts, this collection provides a crucial analysis of Cusk's influences, politics, and literary techniques that speak to many of the most pressing issues in contemporary literature.

Contemporary Critical Perspectives

Rachel Cusk

Wendy Knepper

Courtney Hopf

David Mitchell is one of the most critically acclaimed authors in contemporary global writing. Novels such as Ghostwritten, Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks demonstrate the author's dazzling literary technique in an oeuvre that crosses genres, genders and borders, moving effortlessly through time and space. David Mitchell: Contemporary Critical Perspectives brings together leading scholars of contemporary fiction to guide readers through the full range of the author's writings, including discussions of all of his novels to-date plus his shorter fictions, essays and libretti. As well as offering extended coverage of Mitchell's most popular work, Cloud Atlas, the authors explore Mitchell's genre-hopping techniques, world-making aesthetics, and engagements with key contemporary issues such as globalization, empire, the environment, disability, trauma and technology. In addition, this book includes an expansive interview with David Mitchell as well as a guide to further reading to help students and readers alike explore the works of this tremendously inventive writer.

David Mitchell

Eileen Pollard

Ginette Carpenter

The first British writer to win the Booker Prize on two separate occasions - for Wolf Hall in 2009 and its sequel Bring Up the Bodies in 2012 - Hilary Mantel is one of the most popular and lauded novelists working today. Hilary Mantel: Contemporary Critical Perspectives is a critical guide to Mantel's work, from her earliest novels through to her recent Thomas Cromwell fictions, including analysis of her short story collections and memoir. Chapters cover such topics as Mantel's engagement with history to her deployment of the spectral and her extensive intertextuality. The book also includes a comprehensive interview with Mantel herself that explores her work and career.

Hilary Mantel

An in-depth analysis and critique of the concept of intention, its uses within the realms of literary theory, aesthetics, philosophy of language, phenomenology and deconstruction, and its potential for redefinition.

Towards an Intentionality of Literary Form

Intention and Text

This introduction places Kennedy's work in a clear historical and theoretical context. Its importance is considered in terms of contemporary Scottish identity and relevance to key issues in contemporary culture. Accessible and comprehensive, this guide includes a timeline of key dates, interview with the author and an overview of critical reception.

A.L. Kennedy

A multiple award-winning author, Sarah Waters is one of the most critically and commercially successful novelists writing today. In such novels as Fingersmith, Tipping the Velvet, Affinity and The Night Watch, her writing has played compellingly with popular and generic forms and narrative techniques and covered a number of important contemporary themes. This critical guide is the first book to offer a wide range of current critical perspectives on Waters' work. With chapters written by leading established and emerging scholars the book explores issues such as gender, sexuality, class, time and space in Waters' fiction, as well as her appropriation of a range of genres from the historical and neo-victorian novel to the gothic. The book also includes a new interview with Waters herself, a timeline of her life, chapter summaries and guides to further reading, making this an essential guide to the work of one of the most exciting voices in contemporary fiction.

Sarah Waters

Leading scholars explore the work of Sarah Waters from a full range of critical perspectives. Includes a new interview with the author.

Kaye Mitchell

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