Ground Zero Fiction

History, Memory, and Representation in the American 9/11 Novel / Birgitt Däwes

17.04.2012

A decade after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the iconic force of what Jean Baudrillard has termed a "symbolic world event" has not subsided. What is less commonly known is the extent to which literary texts have contributed to the cultural memory of the day we now call '9/11.' In the past ten years, over 150 novels by U.S.-American writers have fictionally re-enacted, reflected, or revised the dominant media narrative of 'the day that changed everything.'

Birgitt Däwes' study systematically charts the richly diverse 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, Richard Powers, 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.

Birgitt Däwes' "Ground Zero Fiction" study was awarded the 2012 American Studies Network Book Prize.