Gheorghiu, Oana-Celia. British and American Representations of 9/11: Literature, Politics and the Media. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, IX, 269, 96.29 €, ISBN 978-3-319-75249-5 (hardcover), 978-3-030-09182-8 (softcover)

Abstract

This study catalogues 9/11 fiction pro­duced by American and British writers with the purpose of revealing the untenability of keeping fiction and reality separate. By viewing its selected corpus as belonging to contemporary realism, it employs the framework of New Historicism/ Cul­tural Materialism, both of which are deemed nec­essary to account for the study’s undertaking in establishing a continuity between literature and reality, using Stephen Greenblatt’s writings as a guideline. Particularly, his concept of “cultural poetics” is mobilized to highlight the exchange occurring between the social space and the aes­thetic practice in the wake of the attacks of 11 September 2001 and the subsequent War on Terror. It aims to showcase how the chosen literary repre­sentations mirror the turmoil that Western identity went through after the event. Moreover, it sheds light on how the authors and their social milieu apprehend the Muslim other.