THE CONTEMPORARY NOVEL COURSE 2024
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2018
The Contemporary Novel
How does the novel, a literary form some four centuries old, continue to speak to us today? The novel has been declared dead on numerous occasions, yet it indisputably remains in a state of rude health: how has it continued to win a share of our collective attention, despite stiff competition from new media? What do we want from novels when we read them, and what do they ask of their readers?
We will explore these questions through six of the most interesting and original novels to have been published since the turn of the millennium (2006-2021).
These novels typify the remarkable range - both formal and intellectual - of our literary moment. They encompass a wide spread of national histories and local concerns, drawing on a plethora of genres and styles.
Each session has a lecture followed by a seminar, led by Dr Joseph Steinberg, a graduate of Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, and Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Western Australia.
Sessions are live online via Zoom, fortnightly on Saturdays from 5 October 2024 to 14 December 2024, 2.00 pm-4.00 pm British time.
Wolf Hall (2009) by Hilary Mantel
Set books
Lecture 1. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)
Lecture 2. Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal (2008)
Lecture 3. Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009)
Lecture 4. Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table (2011)
Lecture 5. Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer (2015)
Lecture 6. Gwendoline Riley, My Phantoms (2021)
Optional further reading
Timothy Bewes, Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional Age (2022)
Robert Eaglestone, Contemporary Fiction: A Very Short Introduction (2013)
Dorothy J. Hale, The Novel and the New Ethics (2020)
Amy Hungerford, Making Literature Now (2015)
Mark McGurl, Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon (2021)
Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing (2023)
Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (2017)
Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (1957)
Recordings
Every session is live online. Each lecture will be recorded live and made available to course participants throughout the course and for a week afterwards. The seminars are not recorded.
Course fees for six sessions
£300.00 full price
£270.00 students
£270.00 CAMcard holders
Prices include VAT at 20%
Please support local and independent bookshops when buying books for our courses, either directly or through Bookshop.org or Hive.
Map of independent bookshops in the UK: here.
Zoom link
We will send you a Zoom link by email no later than 24 hours before the course begins. If the link does not arrive, please let us know by email in good time, at least an hour before the session begins, so we can re-send.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Links
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Half of a Yellow Sun, BBC Radio 4 Bookclub
Adichie, ‘Truth and Lies’, on Half of a Yellow Sun, The Guardian, 16 Sept. 2006
Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun voted best of the Women’s Prize winners, BBC report
Adichie, ‘I Decided to Call Myself a Happy Feminist’, The Guardian, 17 Oct. 2014
Adichie, ‘The Books of My Life’, The Guardian, 15 Sept. 2023
Obituary for Hilary Mantel, The Guardian, 23 September 2022
Viet Thanh Nguyen, website
Review of Riley, My Phantoms, The Guardian, 1 April 2021
Review of Riley’s haunted heroines, The Atlantic, Sept. 2022