Figures of Catastrophe ─ The Condition of Culture Novel

A bold new vision of the modern English novel

The leading critic Francis Mulhern uncovers a hidden history in the English novel and demonstrates its intimate, formative association with the course of the British labor movement, from its rise in the early twentieth century to the years of decline from the 1980s onwards. In this striking reconstruction, culture emerges as a stake in social conflict, above all that of classes; the narrative evaluations of culture’s ends—the aspirations and destinies of those whose lives are the matter of its fictions—grow steadily darker as time passes. Readings of classic and contemporary novelists from Hardy and Forster to Amis, Kureishi and Smith, among others, illuminate the forms and narrative logics of the genre that Mulhern terms the “condition of culture novel,” and places it in international context.

Francis Mulhern (born 1952) comes from Enniskillen in Northern Ireland. He was educated at University College Dublin and the University of Cambridge. His books includeThe Moment of ‘Scrutiny’ and Culture/Metaculture. He is Associate Editor ofNew Left Review.