Christine Brooke-Rose and Contemporary Fiction in Bloomington, MN

Christine Brooke-Rose is one of the most innovative and yet critically neglected of contemporary British writers. In this first full-length study of her work, Sarah Birch provides a comprehensive reading of her writing, from her early realist work to the experimental fictions of novels such as
Out
and
Xorandor
, and situates it in the context of contemporary developments in literature and literary theory. Birch asks why a novelist who has been so highly praised by critics is nevertheless excluded from the contemporary canon, and shows how Brooke-Rose's position on the borders of European and British cultures raises key questions concerning the notion of a "national" tradition and of literary postmodernism.