This chapter discusses the scholarly criticism of Marlouf's work, which began in the late 1970s after the publication of Johnno and Neighbours in a Thicket. It studies several monographs on Marlouf and identifies the distinguishing characteristics of his literature. This chapter also tries to give due attention to Marlouf's place within the field of postcolonial writing.

This chapter discusses the way in which ‘domestic’ femininity was defined in relation, rather than opposition, to the public discourses of work and productivity. Focusing predominantly upon conduct literature by Hannah More and Jane West, it explores the ways in which reading is imagined to be a form of ‘wholesome labour’, allowing women to identify with a version of the middle-class work ethic without leaving the security of the domestic sphere. At the same time, by utilising discourses of labour to depict the effort of reading, these writers risk violating the rigid codes of gender and propriety to which they generally subscribe.

This chapter examines Ian McEwan's novels The Innocent and Black Dogs which represent a significant phase of political writing. In both works, the private-public nexus is extended in different ways and they both engage with international politics, and particularly with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. The binary oppositions that order the works at the levels of argument, or ideas, are systematically and purposively unravelled.

This chapter studies the three main themes of language, writing and New York. It studies New York for the ways the characters, particularly Quinn in ‘City of Glass’, relate to the urban experience. It then discusses Auster's persistent theme of language and its capacity to engage and represent the metropolitan condition. This chapter also reviews the idea of writing, and emphasises the instabilities of literary form.

This chapter discusses Jamila Gavin's award-winning story of lost children, Coram Boy, an adaptation of which opened at the Olivier Theatre in November 2005. Like Priestley, Gavin utilises the idea of ‘return’ to forge a connection between past and present. While Priestley does this in order to question the shape of the future, however, Gavin concentrates on rediscovery and renewal. Virtually all the plays and novels discussed in the book are strongly reliant on narrative. This book ends with an emphasis on survival. At the end of Gavin's story, a lost child is found and a breach in time is healed.

In this chapter, the daughters are Lyra Belacqua, Philip Pullman's child-protagonist in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and Strindberg's protagonist, Indra's Daughter (also called Agnes), in A Dream Play. A dramatisation of His Dark Materials was running at the Olivier Theatre when Katie Mitchell's adaptation of A Dream Play opened at the Cottesloe Theatre on 15 February 2005. Katie Mitchell marginalised the Daughter, who is at the centre of Strindberg's play. This chapter attempts to relocate her—to find a ‘lost child’—partly through a discussion of the play, and various productions of it. In addition, this chapter refers to Strindberg's related letters and diary entries, and also to his paintings that were on display at the Tate Modern in an exhibition that ran concurrently with the Cottesloe production.

This chapter focuses on changes in early modern humour. The first few decades of the professional theatre had been dominated by star comedians such as Dick Tarlton and Will Kemp. In the 1590s, tragedians took over. A shift in taste is discernible, away from the pratfalls and improvisational repartee of the early generation of comedians. Shakespearean clowns are largely replaced by wise fools, quibbles and puns take the place of malapropisms and scurrilous humour. A similar development might be traced in the burgeoning genre of jestbook literature. A closer look at Twelfth Night reveals that, in William Shakespeare's last romantic comedy, he incorporates many of the trends in laughter outlined so far.

This book offers an overview of the career of Philip Roth, with particular emphasis on his later work, and an assessment of his contribution to contemporary American fiction. Rather than attempting to survey all of Roth's work, it concentrates on the second half of his career, from the publication of The Ghost Writer (1979) to The Plot Against America (2004). The book considers some of the ways in which Roth's generic experimentation appropriates, complicates and finally parodies aspects of both realism and postmodernism, making connections between these texts and works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Pynchon, Tim O'Brien and Bret Easton Ellis. Moreover, it discusses Roth's treatment of morality, mortality and masculinity in what it considers to be his masterpiece, Sabbath's Theater (1995), comparing it with a short story by Stanley Elkin and a novel by Howard Jacobson that share many of its themes.

This chapter outlines Auster's characters and follows their descent, their rescue and their subsequent recovery from social and linguistic failure. It also considers several of Auster's later novels, namely The Brooklyn Follies and Oracle Night. This chapter also deals with the themes of urban redemption and briefly discusses these texts.

This chapter studies Ghosh's meditation on questions of religion, identity, nationalism and colonialism in a postcolonial world. It takes a look at The Shadow Lines, In an Antique Land, The Glass Palace and The Hungry Tide. This chapter also describes Ghosh's most thorough attempt to work through the political logic of modernity in the postcolonial world.