The Late-Career Novelist: Career Construction Theory, Authors and Autofiction

(Hardback)

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The first scholarly study of the phenomenon of the late-career novel, this book explores the ways in which bestselling contemporary novelists look back and respond to their earlier successes in their subsequent writings. Exploring the work of major novelists such as Angela Carter, V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, A.S. Byatt and Graham Swift, The Late-Career Novelist draws for the first time on social psychology and career construction theory to examine how the dynamics of a literary career play out in the fictional worlds of our best-known novelists. From here, Hywel Dix develops and argues for a new mode of reading contemporary writing on the contexts of current literary culture.

Reviews

In The Late-Career Novelist, Hywel Dix demonstrates that the figure of the author is well and truly alive and kicking in the twenty-first century. Through readings of the works of A. S. Byatt, Haruki Murakami, V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, and others, The Late-Career Novelist shows that studying a writers late work provides knowledge into more than just the career and self-retrospect of an individual author. Late career writings, often self-conscious and self-critical, offer insight into the figure of the author, the reciprocity or reading and writing, and the function of contemporary literature in the social world. * Dr. Alison Gibbons, Reader in Contemporary Stylistics, Sheffield Hallam University *
In his well-written seven-chapter volume on contemporary novelists such as Angela Carter, V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, A.S. Byatt and Graham Swift, Hywel Dix takes the all-together new and original path of examining at the late-career works of established and highly-acclaimed authors. * Dr. K. Ferreira-Meyers, Coordinator Linguistics and Modern Languages/Literature Institute of Distance Education, University of Swaziland, Swaziland *

Author Bio

Hywel Dix is Principal Lecturer in English and Communication at Bournemouth University, UK. His previous books include Postmodern Fiction and the Break-Up of Britain (Bloomsbury, 2010).