This book focuses on the work of a group of British novelists who have broken in different ways from the realist British novel of the post Second World War period without losing their broad appeal among readers. Authors discussed include Salman Rushdie, A.S. Byatt, Ian McEwan, Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson and Kazuo Ishiguro. All of these writers have been compelled to seek out new narrative strategies to give appropriate expression to their different responses to a world dominated by global capital and by the media and electronic systems of communication serving its ends.
Brian Finney, a professor of English, has published seven books on subjects ranging from a biography of Christopher Isherwood (awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Book Prize for the best biography of 1979) to his latest book, Terrorized: How the War on Terror Affected American Culture and Society, published on Amazon's Kindle in 2011.
Born in London, he obtained a degree in English and Philosophy at Reading University and a PhD at the University of London. He spent three years as an officer in the Royal Air Force and five years in management at Joseph Lucas Electrical and Standard Telephones and Cables. In 1964 he transferred to the University of London where he taught for its Department of Extra-Mural Studies.
In 1987 he emigrated to Southern California. After two years as a visiting professor at the University of California, Riverside and subsequent adjunct positions at UCLA and the University of Southern California, he became a full-time professor at California State University, Long Beach, where he is currently a professor emeritus in the Department of English.
His full list of published books is:
Terrorized: How the War on Terror Affected American Culture and Society. Amazon: Kindle, 2011.
Martin Amis. Routledge Guides to Literature. London and New York: Routledge, 2008
English Fiction Since 1984: Narrating a Nation. London and New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006.
D. H. Lawrence. Sons and Lovers: A Critical Study. Harmondsworth, Middlesex:
Penguin; New York: Viking Penguin, 1990.
The Inner I: British Literary Autobiography of the Twentieth Century. London: Faber &
Faber; New York: Oxford UP, 1985.
Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography. London: Faber & Faber; New York:
Oxford UP, 1979.
Since How It Is: A Study of Samuel Beckett's Later Fiction. London: Covent Garden P,
1972.
His web site can be accessed at: http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney
