Present Tense Narration in Contemporary Fiction

Irmtraud Huber is a lecturer in English literature at the Universität Bern, Switzerland. Her PhD on the role of fantastical elements in recent literary attempts to go beyond postmodernism received the Helene-Richter Prize from the Deutscher Anglistenverband. Her monograph Literature after Postmodernism: Reconstructive Fantasies was published by Palgrave in 2014.

• Introduction.- Chapter 1. Past and Present of Present-tense Narration.- Chapter 2. Narrative Deictic Narration.- Chapter 3. Retrospective Narration.- Chapter 4. Interior Monologue.- Chapter 5. Simultaneous Narration.- Chapter 6. Mixed Cases.- Conclusion.- Appendix.- Works Cited.- Notes.

“Present-Tense Narration in Contemporary Fiction provides its reader with a comprehensive survey of different usages of the present tense in contemporary narrative fiction which accounts for the diversity of individual narratives by sensibly eschewing any form-to-function mapping. … Huber’s study makes for an inspiring read which gives valuable food for thought to any literary scholar interested not only in concrete manifestations of present-tense narration, but also in major works of contemporary fiction.” (Carolin Gebauer, Diegesis, Vol. 6 (1), 2017)