The Guardian Bookshop makes over 180,000 books available with up to 40% discount, as well as highlighting some of our favourite publications in each genre.
Find out more.
A study which traces the complex transformation of Britain's capital city over 25 years in contemporary fiction. It discusses the works of key writers such as Amis, Rushdie and McEwan and brings the disparate nature of contemporary London fiction into a single, critical volume. *Also appeared in August Buyer's Notes*
Synopsis
London has become the focus of a ferocious imaginative energy since the rise of Thatcher. The Making of London analyses the body of work by writers who have committed their writing to the many lives of a city undergoing complex transformations, tracing a major shift in the representation of the capital city.
Book Details
Publisher:
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Publication Date:
09-Aug-2011
ISBN:
9780230348363
Guardian review
The Making of London by Sebastian Groes review
the guardian Tue 29 November 2011
"London's long and dense history make it, more than any other city, a fiction", claims Groes in this study of the way writers make and remake the city in their imaginations. It's debatable whether London is indeed unique in this regard, but Groes has written a work of impressive insight and erudition. From the Thatcher era through the New Labour years, writers were united by a desire to "resist and reverse the increasing fragmentation of the metropolis". He highlights a "sense of crisis" pervading the work of writers such as JG Ballard, Iain Sinclair and Martin Amis. By contrast, Ian McEwan sees continuity and promise in the city where others find disintegration and decline. Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Monica Ali reinvigorated and internationalised the London novel, bringing new layers of non-western language and culture to an already diverse city. But the days of the "exciting, energetic London novel" may be numbered, thinks Groes, due in part to risk-averse publishers but also to the suburbanisation of the city.