The Irish Expatriate Novel in Late Capitalist Globalization

The first monograph-length study of Irish expatriate fiction in an era of transition from American to East Asian global hegemony.

This book will engage readers interested in Irish fiction dealing with the United States, Asia, the Global South and Europe. A conceptually innovative study of Irish expatriate novels that situates Irish writing in terms of the country's changing place in an international order in a time of turbulent global change.This study of contemporary Irish expatriate fiction offers a boldly original world-facing rather than nation-focused overview of the contemporary Irish novel. Chapters examine how Irish narrative deals with the United States in a time of declining global hegemony, a rising China and Asia, a thwarted and turbulent Global South, and a European Union that has decisively reshaped Ireland in the last half century. The author argues that in a late capitalist world defined by volatile economic and cultural globalizations, the Irish novel is struggling to imagine new ways to narrate the country's relationship to the world capitalist system and to find new place for Irish writing in the world literary system. Looking at a rapidly-changing Ireland in a rapidly-changing international order, Joe Cleary offers new readings of novels by Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright, Joseph O'Neill, Deirdre Madden, Mary Costello, Naoise Dolan, Aidan Higgins, Colum McCann, Ronan Sheehan and Ronan Bennett.