Precarious Labour and the Contemporary Novel

Explores how novelists have responded to the changes in the contemporary work economy

Argues that the growth of flexible labour has produced narratives of nostalgia, generational contest and feelings of insecurity across a range of national contexts

Unites a wealth of literary perspectives, from critical theorists to American, British and Indian novelists

Autorentext
Liam Connell is Senior Lecturer English Literature at the University of Brighton. He is the director of Brighton's C21 Research group. He has written widely on contemporary literature and the questions globalization and transnationalism. He is the co-editor of Globalization and Literature: A Reader (2010).

Inhalt

1 Introduction.- 2 Reading Coupland Backwards: Time, Generationality and Work in Generation X, Microserfs and JPod.- 3 Precarity and Subjective Life: Matt Thorne's Eight Minutes Idle and David Szalay's London and the South East.- 4 Dying to Work: American Nationalism and the End of Productive Labour.- 5 Working Women and the Welfare State: Jenny Turner's The Brainstorm.- 6 Conclusion.