Ground Zero Fiction

de Birgit Däwes

A decade after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, over 160 novels by U.S.-American writers have re-enacted or revised the day we now call '9/11'. This study systematically charts the rich subgenre of Ground Zero Fiction by exploring its formal, structural, thematic, and functional dimensions. In a combination of typological survey and detailed analysis, both familiar texts (by Jonathan Safran Foer, Don DeLillo, or John Updike) and lesser-known approaches (by writers such as Karen Kingsbury, Laila Halaby, Nicholas Rinaldi, Helen Schulman, or Ronald Sukenick) are investigated for their specific engagements with contemporary history. The American 9/11 novel, this volume argues, not only provides a productive testing ground for narrative crisis management, but it serves as an exemplary twenty-first century interface between historical and fictional representation, between ethical and aesthetic responsibilities, and between national and transnational formations of identity.