Present Tense Narration in Contemporary Fiction

In this book, Irmtraud Huber considers a wide range of contemporary novels to explore the variety of possibilities and effects of the use of the present tense, as well as investigating the reasons for its popularity. By illustrating the complexity and sophistication of four different types of contemporary usage, Huber's discussion goes some way towards refuting those critical voices which consider present-tense narration a passing fad and stylistic affectation. As a tense of narration, the present can serve to tell different stories than the past tense, or can tell them differently. By no means a passing fad, it is an important characteristic of contemporary literature.

Offers a meticulous and unique insight into the sub-categories of present-tense narrative Presents a concise and timely analysis of some of the early twenty-first century's most iconic present-tense fiction Provides new ways of understanding this much marginalised genre

Autorentext
Irmtraud Huber is a lecturer in English literature at the Universität Bern, Switzerland. Her PhD on the role of fantastical elements in recent literary attempts to go beyond postmodernism received the Helene-Richter Prize from the Deutscher Anglistenverband. Her monograph Literature after Postmodernism: Reconstructive Fantasies was published by Palgrave in 2014.

Inhalt
Introduction.- Chapter 1. Past and Present of Present-tense Narration.- Chapter 2. Narrative Deictic Narration.- Chapter 3. Retrospective Narration.- Chapter 4. Interior Monologue.- Chapter 5. Simultaneous Narration.- Chapter 6. Mixed Cases.- Conclusion.- Appendix.- Works Cited.- Notes.