Toward the Geopolitical Novel: U.S. Fiction in the Twenty-First Century (Literature Now)

A survey of more than 125 works illuminate the resurgence of the American political novel in the twenty-first century. Caren Irr follows Junot Díaz, Helon Habila, Aleksandar Hemon, Hari Kunzru, Dinaw Mengestu, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Norman Rush, Gary Shteyngart, and others as they rethink the migration narrative, the Peace Corps thriller, the national allegory, the revolutionary novel, and the expatriate's experience with self-discovery. Taken together, these innovations define a new literary form: the geopolitical novel. More cosmopolitan and socially critical than domestic realism, the genre tests American liberalism and explores how in-migration, out-migration, the nation, revolution, and the traveling subject should be retooled for a new century.