Community in Contemporary British Fiction

Sara Upstone is Professor of Contemporary Literature at Kingston University, London, UK. She has published three monographs, most recently Rethinking Race and Identity in Contemporary British Literature. She is also the co-editor of three edited collections, most recently Postmodern Literature and Race.Peter Ely is a writer and lecturer based in London, UK. His research works at the intersection of philosophy, critical theory and literature to examine the political potential of ‘community’ in contemporary British society. He is currently converting his PhD into a monograph entitled The Politics of Community in Contemporary British Literature.

• IntroductionPeter Ely and Sara Upstone, Introduction: ‘Rewriting Community in an Age of Crisis and Nostalgia’.Section One: National Community1. Robert Eaglestone, ‘“The little links are broke”: Ethnocentrism, Englishness and Loneliness in Contemporary Political Science, Political Theory and Contemporary British Fiction’. 2. Alison Garden, ‘“Our uneasy mixed community”: Cross-community Romance, Magic Realism and Northern Ireland’.3. Timothy Baker, ‘Incomers and Settlers: Nomadism and Entanglement in Contemporary Scottish Fiction’.Section Two: Speculative Community4. Peter Ely, ‘Beyond the Multicultural: Queer Community in Jackie Kay’s Trumpet’.5. Caroline Lusin, ‘Neoliberalism and (Sub)Urban Identities in 21st-Century London Novels’.6. Devon Campbell-Hall, ‘Writing Othered Asian British Skins: Interrogating Racism in Fictional Asian British Communities’.Section Three: Precarious Community 7. Kristian Shaw, ‘Performing the Nation: A Disunited Kingdom in Jonathan Coe’s Middle England’.8. Emily Horton, ‘“Why would you play a game like that?”: Community and the Pandemic in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun’.9. Sara Upstone, ‘Even the Ghosts: Community in the Wake’.