Being struck by the event: literature and its subjects after postmodernism

Anglophone contemporary literature has changed significantly since the 1990s. In this book Nadine Feßler investigates the role of the event and how its new importance invigorates and empowers the subjects in the novels discussed. She analyzes seven novels by the authors Ian McEwan, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, Nicole Krauss, David Mitchell, Anne Enright and Aravind Adiga and focuses on three areas in which this development manifests itself: authorship, ethics and the sacred.

The study examines not only how these notions are reworked, but also how they relate to eventfulness and subjectivity. In particular, Feßler demonstrates how these novels discard traditional notions of the subject and replace them with what she calls ‘captivated’ or unexpectedly empowered subjects.

The changes revealed in this study clearly point to the emergence of a post-postmodern literature. Feßler explores this new landscape by describing how these new novels are different from classical postmodern ones and why this difference is important for the study of contemporary fiction.