Syllabus and Course Schedule

The course description and reading list appear below, along with a calendar of the scheduled readings and topics for the course. The full syllabus can be downloaded as a .pdf here. *Please note that Hotel World and The Sense of An Ending have been switched in the schedule! 



Course Description

In this course we will ask what characterizes the fiction of contemporary Britain and what the status and role of fiction is today. We will take six works of fiction written in Britain in the 21st century and read them closely. We will treat these works as case studies in order to come up with our own answers to the question of what fiction means now in Britain. What kinds of works are being written, who writes them, and what determines their cultural, aesthetic, and market success? Examining works by authors from a variety of cultural backgrounds, of both genders, and of different ages, writing in a range of narrative styles and literary genres, we will acknowledge and explore the diversity of perspectives and approaches that make up contemporary literary culture. In addition to reading the texts and exploring the nature of contemporary British authorship, we will also examine the practices and responses of current readers of fiction both by being critical assessors of our own reading practices and by exploring literary reviewing culture (both formal, in such venues as the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books, and informal, in blog posts and customer reviews from online retailers).

Required Reading

Barnes, Julian. The Sense of An Ending. London: Cape, 2011.
Lever, James. Me, Cheeta. London: Fourth Estate, 2009.
McEwan, Ian. Atonement. London: Cape, 2001.
Mitchell, David. Cloud Atlas. London: Sceptre, 2004.
Smith, Ali. Hotel World. London: Penguin, 2002.
Smith, Zadie. On Beauty. London: Penguin, 2005.



All texts are available at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore. If you buy them there and mention the course, you’ll be offered a free tea or coffee! You may use any edition of the texts you can find, though, and they should all be readily available. Any shorter extracts or supplementary material will be made available in class or on the course website.



Course Calendar