Community in Twentieth Century Fiction is the first systematic study on the role that modern and contemporary fiction has played in the imaginary construction and deconstruction of human communities. Drawing on recent theoretical debate on the notion of community (Nancy, Blanchot, Badiou, Esposito), the essays in this collection examine narratives by Joyce, Waugh, Greene, LaGuma, Mansfield, Davies, O'Brien, Naipaul, DeLillo, Coetzee, Frame and Atwood. Through the integrated articulation of notions such as finitude, openness, exposure, immunity and death, we aim at uncovering the strategies of communal figuration at work in modern and contemporary fiction. Most of these strategies involve a rejection of organic communities based on essentialist fusion and an inclination to dramatize 'inoperative communities' (Nancy) of singularities aware of their own finitude and exposed to that of others.

This book focuses on the imaginary construction and deconstruction of human communities in modern and contemporary fiction. Drawing on recent theoretical debate on the notion of community (Nancy, Blanchot, Badiou, Esposito), this collection examines narratives by Joyce, Mansfield, Davies, Naipaul, DeLillo, Atwood and others.