British Fictions of the Sixties: The Making of the Swinging Decade

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British Fictions of the Sixties focuses on the major socio-political changes that marked the sixties in relationship to the development of literature over the decade. This book is the first critical study to acknowledge that the 1960s can only be understood if, next to its contemporary socio-political history, its fictions and mythologies are acknowledged as a vital constituent in the understanding of the decade. Groes uncovers a major epistemological shift, and presents a powerful meta-narrative about post-war literature in the UK, and beyond. British Fictions of the Sixties offers a re-examination of canonical writers such as Iris Murdoch, Angela Carter, Muriel Spark and John Fowles. It also pays critical attention to avant-garde writers including Ann Quinn, Bridget Brophy, Eva Figes, Christine Brooke-Rose, and J. G. Ballard, presenting a comprehensive insight into the continuing power the decade exerts on the contemporary imagination.

Reviews

Nicely provocative. * Times Literary Supplement *
[A] wide-ranging compendium that puts the novel at the centre of a culture ... Groess study is very timely, and should be attended to in current debates about the periodization of the recent literary past, and of the constitution of the contemporary. * Review of English Studies *
The book represents an important contribution to our thinking not only about the fiction of the 1960s but also that decades place in our cultural imagination ... Groes has an engaging style, and the imaginative organisation of the material makes the sometimes complex arguments accessible to a range of readers, whilst maintaining a rigorous analysis of the fiction based on a set of thoughtful and often intriguing critical approaches. * Literature & History *

Author Bio

Sebastian Groes is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Roehampton, UK. He is the editor series editor of Bloomsburys Contemporary Critical Perspectives series, the editor of Ian McEwan (2013), and co-editor of Kazuo Ishiguro (2009) and Julian Barnes (2011), all published by Bloomsbury. His monograph The Making of London (2011) traces the representation of London in contemporary fiction.