British fiction has always had great variety, even though much of it is Anglo-centric, usually English. Even when the colonial experience provided new perspectives, works such as
E. M. Forster’s (1879–1970)
A Passage to India (1924),
George Orwell’s (1903–1950)
Burmese Days (1934), and Anglo-Irish author
Joyce Cary’s (1888–1957)
Mister Johnson (1939) remained distinctly English at their hearts. In recent decades, however, the British retreat from colonial governance has invigorated writing throughout the Commonwealth, and British writing as a whole has become much less insular. Even though the colonial heritage is only slowly being shaken off, contemporary British authors have been able to look abroad with much less of that baggage than previous generations had. Meanwhile, first- and second-generation British immigrants such as
V. S. Naipaul (b. 1932) and
Zadie Smith (b. 1975) have become major contributors to what has become a much more fluid exchange with the world at large. Traditionally popular British fiction, from mysteries to social novels with their peculiarly English preoccupation with class, as well as newer genre variations, such as the chick lit wave that came in the wake of
Helen Fielding’s (b. 1958)
Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996), also enjoy great success both in Britain and abroad.
The political devolution of Wales and Scotland in the late 1990s has been part of a greater independence movement that has also seen vastly increased support for and interest in local literature. While London remains the vibrant literary center of the nation as a whole, the Welsh and Scottish literary scenes both compete with and complement it. Both writing in Welsh and translation from and into Welsh has increased considerably, and both Welsh and Scottish publishers also are strongly involved in making foreign literature available in English translation.
In contrast, Irish writers have been able to maintain a more distinct identity, despite their ties to Britain. Irish-language fiction, however, is seldom translated, perhaps because of the great success of so many Irish authors writing in English.
ENGLAND
London’s preeminent place as a publishing and literary base, as well as the literary breeding grounds of the English universities, draw writers from throughout Britain and abroad, making England one of the two dominant regions—along with the United States—of English-language writing. American authors, especially of popular fiction, may be even more popular globally, but English writers are nonetheless widely published abroad and make notable contributions to the enormous market share of fiction written in English. Writers born abroad—usually in former British colonies—who have studied or settled in England have long been important contributors to the literary scene, from Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) to V. S. Naipaul (b. 1932) and Salman Rushdie (b. 1947), and in recent years, this class of writers has expanded rapidly, in both size and significance.
Much of the most popular fiction at which English authors excel is strongly rooted in English specifics, most notably mysteries. Although the golden age of English detective fiction reached a peak between the two world wars, modern variations on the mystery continue to enjoy great and deserved success. Writers like
P. D. James (1920–2014) and the more prolific
Ruth Rendell (1930–2015) (who also wrote as Barbara Vine) have consistently produced some of the best-crafted works of serial fiction of recent decades. Much of the appeal of mystery novels is that they are dependably formulaic, but the genre has been constantly renewed, from the works of
Derek Raymond (1931–1994) to
David Peace’s (b. 1967) violent quartet of books covering an era in Yorkshire, the
Red Riding series, which begins with
Nineteen Seventy-Four (1999).
Literary standards for the spy thriller tend not to be as demanding as for mysteries, but the novels of authors such as Eric Ambler (1909–1998), Ian Fleming (1908–1964), and Len Deighton (b. 1929) remain impressive foundational texts, and Graham Greene’s (1904–1991) political thrillers, as well as John le Carré’s (b. 1931) spy fiction, transcend the genre. George MacDonald Fraser’s (1925–2008) Flashman is a brilliantly conceived and utilized fictional antihero. The character was a cast-off from Thomas Hughes’s (1822–1896) classic Tom Brown’s School Days (1857), who was appropriated by Fraser and featured in a dozen volumes of historical adventures published between 1969 and 2005. Although Flashman may be an almost ridiculously politically incorrect protagonist, Fraser’s alternative versions of colonial Victorian history are nonetheless entertaining.
The recent young adult fiction series like
J. K. Rowling’s (b. 1965) Harry Potter saga (1997–2007) and works by
Philip Pullman (b. 1946), like his nineteenth-century Sally Lockhart quartet (1985–1994) and the parallel-universe trilogy of
His Dark Materials (1995–2000), have been immensely popular. Despite the prominent use of magical and fantastical elements in all of these, much about the characters and locales feels very English, such as the boarding school settings, the descriptions of Oxbridge-like academic life, and the very British awareness of social class distinctions. These and similar qualities of Englishness are widely found in both the English genre fiction that has traveled well and much of the more literary fiction.
Penelope Fitzgerald (1916–2000) began publishing fiction late in life—her first novel appeared in 1977—but her finely hewn short novels are beautiful. A series of works of English life was followed by several with historical or foreign settings, including The Beginning of Spring (1988), set in prerevolutionary Moscow, and The Blue Flower (1995), her version of the eighteenth-century German poet Novalis’s love affair with a young girl.
A. S. Byatt (b. 1936) sometimes gets carried away in presenting period detail—whether of the nineteenth century or the 1960s—but her stories and precise, controlled writing are consistently impressive. Possession (1990), her novel of letters, poetry, and love, weaves together the stories of two contemporary scholars and their research on two Victorian poets. It is one of her most appealing works. The quartet of novels of English life and culture in the 1950s and 1960s featuring Frederica Potter, beginning with The Virgin in the Garden (1978) and closing with A Whistling Woman (2002), is a convincing record of the times.
Ian McEwan (b. 1948) is another careful and precise writer. His early works are dark and unsettling, but his later novels tend to have a more measured approach. Much of his work turns on a single event or circumstance as he explores the ripple effects that these cause. Aside from
Amsterdam (1998)—a misstep with an over-the-top denouement, for which he nevertheless won the Booker Prize—most of his work is strong, with his novels about the loss of a child,
The Child in Time (1987), and about betrayal,
Atonement (2001), among the best. Some readers, however, find irritating the cloying realism of his most recent works.
OTHER ENGLISH WRITERS I
• Iris Murdoch’s (1919–1999) elaborate and often profoundly philosophical books offer considerable intellectual satisfaction.
• Margaret Drabble (b. 1939), A. S. Byatt’s sister, also has written a number of solid works.
• Some of Kingsley Amis’s (1922–1995) fiction already is dated, but several works, like the comic Lucky Jim (1954), remain entertaining records of their day.
• David Lodge’s (b. 1935) fiction, especially his amusing novels of modern academia, also is worth reading.
Even though his tales often revel in the sordid, the talented Martin Amis (b. 1949) has a wonderful way with words and feel for language, which he always makes his own. A great admirer of Saul Bellow (1915–2005), Amis’s aggressive, forced style can be both riveting and off-putting. Money: A Suicide Note (1984) is narrated by a character named John Self and offers all that Amis does best. While parts of the boozy, self-loathing novel may be hard to stomach, Money is also very funny. Amis often toys with formal constraints as well, most notably in the underrated Time’s Arrow (1991). In this novel, the narrator, a doctor who was involved in the medical experimentation at Auschwitz, recounts his life, but he experiences it unspooling in reverse as he finds himself regressing from old age to infancy. Amis’s later work has grown increasingly uneven, however, and includes ambitious failures such as the messy Yellow Dog (2003). Among Amis’s weakest works are those in which he is unable to temper his polemical streak and feels compelled to tackle the issues of the day, mixing nonfiction and fiction in collections such as Einstein’s Monsters (1987) and The Second Plane (2008).
OTHER ENGLISH WRITERS II
• Julian Barnes’s (b. 1946) creative, varied output—including the quartet of crime novels featuring the bisexual former policeman Duffy, published under the pseudonym of Dan Kavanagh—is consistently rewarding.
• The prolific Peter Ackroyd (b. 1949) writes much nonfiction, but the best of his imaginative works, such as the alternative-history novel Milton in America (1997) and the speculative The Plato Papers (1999), are fascinating.
• Howard Jacobson’s (b. 1942) powerful writing and his darkly comic novels that often feature Jewish characters inevitably draw comparisons to Philip Roth.
From the amusing punk and rock music thriller,
The Dwarves of Death (1990), to a variety of broader examinations of British society,
Jonathan Coe’s (b. 1961) cleverly constructed novels are both comic and poignant. With a style more subtle than that of most of the best-known British authors, his work has resonated particularly well in the romance-language nations, especially France.
Jeanette Winterson’s (b. 1959) elliptical fiction often leaves a great deal unsaid but offers unusual and captivating perspectives. Her coming-of-age debut, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), features an artless narrator similar to those found in many of her works, typically facing a world in which she discovers she does not quite fit yet becomes confident in her own identity. Storytelling and art are important subjects in nearly all of Winterson’s work, dealt with in a variety of forms. The appropriately entitled Art and Lies (1994) is one of her most interesting explorations of the subject. Even though Winterson’s writing can be pretentious and sententious, it also has a great deal of creativity, and she has a fine ear for language.
The fiction of the extraordinary stylist Gilbert Adair (1944–2011) is replete with postmodern trickery. His smart and funny novels often use mystery tropes, whether in a deconstructionist parody like The Death of the Author (1992), which is loosely based on the life of literary theorist Paul de Man (1919–1983), or the trilogy of metafictional whodunit pastiches featuring Evadne Mount, beginning with The Act of Roger Murgatroyd (2006). Adair’s fiction is influenced as well by his fascination with cinema. His novel Love and Death on Long Island (1990), which draws heavily on Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice and describes an aging author suddenly confronting modernity as he becomes obsessed with a young American film actor, successfully integrates his many interests. Adair also wrote A Void (1994), the English rendering of Georges Perec’s La disparition, a novel that infamously does not contain the letter e.
J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) is best known for his relatively conventional autobiographical novel
Empire of the Sun (1984), about his childhood experiences in Shanghai during World War II, but the greater part of his output consists of formally varied and innovative fiction that is brutally critical of modernity. Many of his works can be considered science fiction and depict civilization—on small and large scales—in crisis. Novels like
Crash (1972) offer clinical examinations of the intersection of sex, violence, and technology. His seminal collection
The Atrocity Exhibition (1970, revised 1993; first published in the United States as
Love and Napalm: Export U.S.A. in 1972, two years after publisher Nelson Doubleday ordered the entire print run of the planned first American edition to be destroyed) is a good and disturbing introduction to his work. With its fragmentary, avant-garde approach to narrative and chapter titles such as “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan” and “The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race,” it is a remarkable social- and media-critical text.
OTHER ENGLISH WRITERS III
• Angela Carter’s (1940–1992) groundbreaking fiction, including her many variations on fairy tales and fables, goes well beyond mere feminist interest.
• Geoff Nicholson’s (b. 1953) quirky and amusing novels often feature obsessed and eccentric protagonists.
• Among Scarlett Thomas’s (b. 1972) promising works are the excellent PopCo (2004) and The End of Mr. Y (2006).
Christine Brooke-Rose’s (1923–2012) challenging experimental fiction follows more in the modern French tradition than in the English tradition. Her work constantly reinvents narrative possibilities, beginning at the fundamental building-block level of language, as suggested in such titles as Verbivore (1990) and Textermination (1991).
Will Self’s (b. 1961) refined prose makes his relentless satires revolving around outrageous conceits even more effective. In the twin novellas
Cock & Bull (1992), a female protagonist grows a penis and a man grows a vagina (and that behind his knee), and in
Great Apes (1997), chimpanzees are civilized and at the highest stage of evolution, and humans are the lesser primates. In
The Book of Dave (2006), the rantings of modern-day London cabbie Dave Rudman are dug up centuries later and became the foundational text of a new society.
OTHER ENGLISH WRITERS IV
• Tom McCarthy’s (b. 1969) Remainder (2005) is an artfully presented novel of memory and artistic creation.
• Stewart Home’s (b. 1962) rawer fiction includes pulp parodies and interesting forms of cultural criticism.
The number of authors from the newly independent Commonwealth nations who attended university and/or lived in England has increased dramatically, feeding the postcolonial internationalization of English literature. Many of them are most closely identified with their national literatures, but several English-born authors have also become part of this wave, including those with an immigrant family background, such as Hanif Kureishi (b. 1954), Hari Kunzru (b. 1969), and Zadie Smith (b. 1975), as well as those who have lived for extended periods abroad, such as David Mitchell (b. 1969). Other authors who are part of this broad trend include William Boyd (b. 1952) as well as Kazuo Ishiguro (b. 1954) and Caryl Phillips (b. 1958), both of whom came to England as young children.
The cross-cultural and ethnic mix of Zadie Smith’s (b. 1975) impressive first novel, White Teeth (2000), as well as On Beauty (2005), are typical. The novels, set in London and the Boston area, respectively, have diverse casts of characters. While questions of identity and attachment to nation and culture run throughout them, Smith’s works are broader social canvases, going considerably beyond the usual immigrant novel. Her comic touch and assured juggling of numerous story lines and large casts of characters make these exceptional novels.
Whereas Smith localizes her stories in communities,
Hari Kunzru’s (b. 1969) novels
The Impressionist (2002) and
Transmission (2004) feature untethered protagonists.
The Impressionist is set at the beginning of the twentieth century in the waning British Empire. The main character, Pran Nath, is a figure who repeatedly reinvents himself in futile attempts at adaptation and assimilation.
Transmission is a modern view of the clash of cultures and the roles of individuals in a globalized economy and interconnected world. Kunzru presents a world in which characters and scenarios can be anything, anywhere—a Bollywood movie is made in the Scottish highlands, an Indian call center employee passes herself off as Australian to callers—yet they find that any sort of true escape and complete transformation is difficult to achieve.
While much fine fiction has emerged from this aspect of the British colonial heritage, other writers have succeeded in becoming part of a larger, transnational literature while sidestepping it. Kazuo Ishiguro (b. 1954) was born outside the Commonwealth, and his early fiction deals with his native Japan. His other understated novels, though, such as The Remains of the Day (1989) and Never Let Me Go (2005), seem typically English. Assimilation and societal roles also are at issue in these works, but it is not ethnic or national origin but social class that is pivotal. In Never Let Me Go, this is a new and entirely different order, in which the characters are clones bred to be organ donors.
With its often off-kilter reality and its accessible style, the fiction by longtime Japan resident
David Mitchell (b. 1969) invites comparison with Haruki Murakami’s (b. 1949) works. Mitchell’s novels, such as
Ghostwritten (1999) and
Cloud Atlas (2004), about the new world order of global interconnections, are steeped in pop cultural (and multicultural) references. In
Black Swan Green (2006), Mitchell temporarily retreats, presenting a conventional coming-of-age novel set in 1980s England, but his instincts and talents clearly lie with border- and tradition-crossing novels like the dream-filled Japanese quest story,
number9dream (2001).
ENGLISH SCIENCE FICTION
England has a long, strong tradition of science fiction.
Douglas Adams’s (1952–2001) entertaining series that begins with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) has had great success worldwide.
Other contemporary authors worth seeking out are M. John Harrison (b. 1945) and China Miéville (b. 1972).
The creative work of Jeff Noon (b. 1957), which includes the alternative-reality novel Vurt (1993), also is intriguing.
WALES
Even though the world has fewer than a million Welsh speakers, concentrated in Wales, redoubled efforts at promoting the use and preservation of the language have led to a recent resurgence of Welsh-language writing. A public policy of strong support for translation and publishing has also led to the increased availability of fiction translated into and from Welsh. Nevertheless, fiction originally written in English by Welsh authors still has a much greater reach, both in Britain and abroad.
Caradog Prichard’s (1904–1980) One Moonlit Night (1961, English 1995, and, incompletely, as Full Moon, 1973), set in the early twentieth century, remains one of the most appealing and disturbing works of Welsh fiction. The simple directness of the childish perspective in the novel is deceptive, as Prichard reveals a dark world filled with adult complexity that is anything but idyllic.
In his novels, Robin Llywelyn (b. 1958) has turned sharply away from the generic regional fiction widespread throughout Britain. White Star (1992, English 2004) is a compact, futuristic fantasy novel. The adventures rush by too quickly for it to be a truly effective allegory, but the imaginative turns and his playful language and names make it an intriguing read. From Empty Harbour to White Ocean (1994, English 1996) is more earthbound, though it also uses fictional locales. In this novel, Llywelyn mixes myth, realism, and fantasy in presenting Gregor Marini’s odyssey as he goes abroad to look for a better life in the Capital States.
Niall Griffiths (b. 1966) has emerged as one of the leading writers of Wales, though the Liverpool-born author does not originally come from there. Many of the protagonists in his novels are, similarly, drawn to Wales from elsewhere. The powerful
Grits (2000) brings together disaffected young people who have lost themselves in an excess of drugs, sex, and crime and are trying to find a way out. The descriptions of the stark Welsh countryside, the use of curt, slangy dialogue, and the characters’ overindulgence of alcohol and drugs are typical of Griffiths’s rough, brutal, and lyrical fiction.
Sheepshagger (2001), the story of the murderous Ianto, is a savage and graphic tale but nevertheless a compelling work.
WELSH FICTION
Some English-language fiction is rooted in Wales.
John Williams’s (b. 1961) vivid crime fiction is set in the Welsh capital, Cardiff.
Trezza Azzopardi’s (b. 1961) The Hiding Place (2000) is about a family of Maltese immigrants in 1960s Cardiff that is narrated by the youngest child, the slightly disfigured Dolores.
SCOTLAND
The fiction of many of the best Scottish authors, including Muriel Spark (1918–2006) and Ali Smith (b. 1962), is not particularly Scottish, but issues of national identity nonetheless feature prominently in much contemporary Scottish fiction. Many authors are keen to emphasize the distinctive qualities of their nation and its people, especially in relation to England, while also exploring Scottish insecurities and English political, economic, and cultural dominance.
In recent decades, the use of Scots-inflected English and the Scottish brogue has been prominent in much of the region’s best writing, as it is an obvious way of differentiating between English and Scottish identity.
Irvine Welsh’s (b. 1958) iconic
Trainspotting (1993), describing the heroin culture of Edinburgh’s working-class neighborhoods, was a breakout work in this regard. With much of the text written with idiosyncratic spelling that barely looks like English, the prose and dialogue in
Trainspotting are nevertheless readily decipherable. Even though the language used in the novel would seem to have a distancing effect on the reader, Welsh’s stories have a striking immediacy, in no small part because of the very rawness of the language. The stories are also surprisingly accessible.
Trainspotting remains one of the most successful examples of the extensive use of nontraditional English, but even Welsh largely stopped relying on it in his later fiction. James Kelman’s (b. 1946) more discriminating use of the vernacular, with more emphasis on the rhythm of language than on the spelling of the words, in both the dialogue and his Samuel Beckett–like interior monologues, has also proved very effective. Kelman’s feel for language is already suggested in the titles of some of his fiction, such as the story collection Not Not While the Giro (1983) and the novel How Late It Was, How Late (1994). Much of his fiction deals with Glaswegian working-class lives, and his books feature many heavy drinkers. As a consequence, the language is often realistically vulgar. The controversial Booker Prize–winning How Late It Was, How Late reportedly contains some four thousand uses of variations on the word “fuck,” or an average of more than ten a page. These penetrating texts offer insight into the lives of its characters, though Kelman’s plunges into these ravaged depths may be too protracted for many readers.
Alasdair Gray’s (b. 1934) fiction often deals with nationalist and social concerns, but he also blends in history, science fiction, and satire. Despite the gloomy elements of many of his stories, they almost always have humor, a sly kind of cheer. A talented painter, Gray has designed the covers of most of his books and illustrated several of them as well. His attention to typography and the text layout embellishes what are often tales of artists. Gray’s fiction is often presented in layers as an annotated memoir or with other forms of authorial intrusion into the stories.
Gray’s first and greatest novel,
Lanark (1981), shows the full range of his writing in the story of a Glasgow artist named Duncan Thaw and his later incarnation as Lanark who finds himself in a dystopian city called Unthank. A novel full of doubles and transformations, with Unthank as an allegorical reflection of Glasgow, it is arguably overfilled and overflowing with invention, but most of it is captivating. While Gray spins fantastical conceits appealingly in novels such as
Lanark as well as the futuristic
A History Maker (1994) and the wonderful
Frankenstein-like
Poor Things (1992), he also handles the contemporary and everyday well in a number of his works, including his many fine short stories.
KEEP IN MIND
• While much of A. L. Kennedy’s (b. 1965) work is dark, there is also humor to it.
• Iain Banks (1954–2013) wrote fiction as well as science fiction published under the name Iain M. Banks.
• Janice Galloway’s (b. 1956) novels examine class and personal identity.
• Ian Rankin’s (b. 1960) popular Edinburgh police procedurals feature Inspector Rebus.
IRELAND
All of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom between 1801 and 1922, and Northern Ireland still is, but the geographic separation from the other British Isles and a strong and widely recognized literary tradition have made for what above all else seems to be a very self-confident independent writing culture. Even though most of the leading Irish fiction is published by British rather than Irish publishers, it retains a distinct identity. Among its most striking features is the self-assured ease with which writers beginning with James Joyce (1882–1941) and Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) use the English language, in contrast to what, for example, seems like the artificially refined polish found in so many of the recent works of American fiction by creative writing–program graduates.
Many American and British citizens have Irish ancestry, but much of the most popular and best Irish fiction has been pointedly insular, concerned not with the Irish experience abroad but the domestic one. With its seemingly narrow focus, Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), the brilliant, exhaustive novel of a single Dublin day, June 16, 1904, is the ultimate exemplar, but the island and its subjects have sustained a great deal of other fiction as well.
The older generation of Irish authors also continues to play a significant role in contemporary literature, with both
Edna O’Brien (b. 1930) and
William Trevor (b. 1928) masters of both the novel and the short story.
John McGahern (1934–2006) was less prolific, but his work is in the same class, and of the writers of the next generation,
Sebastian Barry’s (b. 1955) fiction (and plays) stand out.
Other Irish authors’ works have a more international scope, though it is revealing that Hugo Hamilton’s (b. 1953) very good first novels, set in Central Europe, remain underrated and less well known than his popular duo of Dublin crime novels featuring Pat Coyne: Headbanger (1996) and Sad Bastard (1998). Colm Tóibín’s (b. 1955) widely acclaimed work often includes Irish connections, but he also consistently ventures further afield, from his novel about Henry James, The Master (2004), to the sad but beautiful Brooklyn (2009). John Banville’s (b. 1945) stylish novels are generally dominated by lone men of often self-obsessed genius, including historical figures, as in Doctor Copernicus (1976) and Kepler (1978). Banville’s novels also frequently involve issues of art and authenticity, most obviously in the loose trilogy of The Book of Evidence (1989), Ghosts (1993), and Athena (1995), which feature a protagonist, originally introduced as Freddie Montgomery, in different guises. John Banville has also written several earthier crime thrillers under the pen name Benjamin Black, featuring the Dublin pathologist Quirke.
The body of contemporary Irish-language (Irish Gaelic) fiction is relatively small, and of this, only a small amount is available in English. Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s (1905–1970) The Dirty Dust (1949, English 2015, and as Graveyard Clay, 2016), a story consisting almost entirely of the dialogue of the dead and buried in a local graveyard, is the finest and most important example. Other notable modern Irish works, such as Séamas Mac Annaidh’s (b. 1961) Cuaifeach mo londubh buí (1983), which weaves the Gilgamesh epic into a tale of contemporary Ireland, have not yet been translated. The Catholic priest Pádraig Standún (b. 1946) has translated his own work, and his locally popular, straightforward novels offer some insight into the community and social issues, especially those involving the church.
• Flann O’Brien (1912–1966) (the pen name of Brian O’Nolan / Brian Ó Nualláin) wrote clever and allusive humorous fiction, including the modern classics At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) and the posthumously published The Third Policeman (1967).
• Aidan Higgins’s (1927–2015) works of fiction experiment with style and language in the rich Irish tradition.
• Patrick McCabe’s (b. 1955) dark fiction includes the twisted novel The Butcher Boy (1992).
• Anne Enright’s (b. 1962) fiction, especially about family life, is distinctive.
• Roddy Doyle (b. 1958) has written several popular novels that also have been filmed, beginning with The Commitments (1987).
•
Eoin Colfer’s (b. 1965) young adult series is based on the antihero Artemis Fowl (begun 2001).