Books in the Contemporary American and Canadian Writers series

This study explores all of Auster's artistic output - both published and unpublished - for the first time, and considers, in considerable depth, his major themes of New York life, identity, community, writing and storytelling.

This is a groundbreaking study of the most important contemporary American novelist, Philip Roth. Reading alongside a number of his contemporaries and focusing particularly on his later fiction, this book offers a highly accessible, informative and persuasive view of Roth as an intellectually adventurous and stylistically brilliant writer.

A comprehensive study of the most influential figure in postwar American literature, Thomas Pynchon -- .

The first comprehensive treatment of Louise Erdrich's writing in all its diversity. This book offers searching analysis of the common themes and contexts across Erdrich's poetry, prose, memoirs, and children's fiction.

Students and lecturers in contemporary American literature -- .

This book is the first full-length study of Douglas Coupland. The study explores the prolific first decade and a half of Coupland's career, from Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991) to JPod (2006), a period in which he published ten novels and four significant volumes of non-fiction

This is the first major study of Mark Z. Danielewski, an emerging, innovative American novelist and a key figure in contemporary literature. It situates his three novels to date in their literary and cultural context, in the process demonstrating why he is such an important and ground-breaking writer. -- .

This is the first book-length study of Sara Paretsky's detective fiction. Paretsky is known for her influential V.I. Warshawski series, which transformed the masculine hard-boiled detective formula into a vehicle for feminist values. -- .

This is the first full-length study of contemporary American fiction of passing. Its takes as its point of departure the return of racial and gender passing in the 1990's in order to make claims about wider trends in contemporary American fiction.

Explores the figure of the orphan child in a broad selection of contemporary US novels by popular and critically acclaimed authors -- .

Marilynne Robinson features 16 new and exciting essays on the noted American author, the historical settings of her novels, and the contemporary themes of her fiction and nonfiction. -- .

Can reading make us better citizens? Fusing queer theory, citizenship studies, and border studies in its exploration of seven U.S., Canadian, and Indigenous authors, poets, and performance artists, Crossing borders and queering citizenship theorises how reading can work as a empowering tool in contemporary civic struggles in the North America. -- .

This book explores the concept of 'quiet' - an aesthetic of narrative driven by reflective principles - and argues for the term's application to the study of contemporary American fiction. -- .