Acknowledgements
Preface: reading postmodern fiction
Introduction: postmodernism and postmodernity
1. Chapter 1: Postmodern fiction: theory and practice
1.1. An incredulity towards realism
1.2. What postmodern fiction does
1.3. How to read postmodern fiction
2. Chapter 2: Early postmodern fiction: Beckett, Borges, and Burroughs
2.1. Samuel Beckett
2.2. Jorge Luis Borges
2.3. William Burroughs
3. Chapter 3: US metafiction: Coover, Barth, Nabokov, Vonnegut, Pynchon
3.1. Barth’s Funhouse and Coover’s Descants
3.2. Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
3.3. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
3.4. Thomas Pynchon
4. Chapter 4: The postmodern historical novel: Fowles, Barnes, Swift
4.1. Historiographic metafiction
4.2. British historiographic metafiction
4.3. John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
4.4. Graham Swift, Waterland
4.5. Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot
5. Chapter 5: Postmodern-postcolonial fiction
5.1. Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
5.2. Toni Morrison, Beloved
5.3. Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo
6. Chapter 6: Postmodern fiction by women: Carter, Atwood, Acker
6.1. Angela Carter
6.2. Margaret Atwood
6.3. Kathy Acker
7. Chapter 7: Two postmodern genres: cyberpunk and ‘metaphysical’ detective fiction
7.1. Sci-fi and cyberpunk
7.2. William Gibson, Neuromancer
7.3. Detective fiction
7.4. Jorge Luis Borges, ‘Death and the Compass’
7.5. Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
7.6. Paul Auster, City of Glass
8. Chapter 8: Fiction of the ‘postmodern condition’: Ballard, DeLillo, Ellis
8.1. Conclusion: ‘ficto-criticism’
8.2. J. Ballard, Crash
8.3. Don DeLillo, White Noise and Libra
8.4. Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
References
Index