Gentrification in Contemporary Fiction

The first book to focus on literary representations of contemporary gentrification, this is also the first to focus on the ways in which characters’ relationships with their houses and domestic interiors reveal their participation in the wider socioeconomic and political discourses that inform gentrification

Focusing on literary representations of gentrification, this book analyses twenty-first century anglophone novels by authors from the United States, Canada, India, the United Kingdom and Australia. Literary texts, so adept at revealing the experiences and emotions of individuals within communities, are also important vehicles for exploring the complex relationships between individuals and the wider social, economic and political forces that lead to urban transformations including gentrification. These complexities are best revealed, this book argues, by proceeding from a forensic examination of characters’ domestic buildings and spaces.
Examining novels from a broad range of writers, including Zadie Smith, Jonathan Lethem, Aravind Adiga, Michael Chabon and Irvine Welsh, this book makes a powerful case for the importance of literature in helping to understand the lived experience of gentrification.