A perennially intriguing writer placed in the context of her troubled times and our own

Flannery O'Connor's Radical Reality brings together essays by a number of distinguished O'Connor scholars, four of whom were the writer's friends, to assess the impact of the midcentury political, religious, and social milieu on novels and short stories that consistently attract interpretive attention and are rediscovered by new generations of readers.

Relating O'Connor not only to the issues of her day but also to manifest concerns of the early twenty-first century, the contributors illumine new horizons of her relevance. The essays characterize her understanding of reality as radical in that O'Connor wanted us to recognize the true roots of existence.

The contributors address the sources of O'Connor's concern with existential uncertainty and fear, relating it to the stark political light of the 1950s and 1960s; the church history and theology in which she immersed herself; the satiric eye she cast on humankind, on herself, and on her time; and such social issues as radical inequality that she could not escape despite her preoccupation with the eternal.

In addition to offering a range of observations, the contributors mark the current terrain of scholarship on the wry Georgian writer and open new avenues for future explorations in O'Connor's work.