New Global Realism: Thinking Totality in the Contemporary Novel
A comparative study of contemporary realist novels that employ totality as a method and a formal principle to represent the social and economic inequalities of the present, this book examines writing in English, Italian, Kannada, and Spanish by authors from Zimbabwe, Ghana, Italy, India and Mexico.

By theorizing four modalities of totalization employed by contemporary realist writers, this book explores the current resurgence of realism and challenges critical approaches that consider it naive or formally unsophisticated. Instead, it argues that realist novels offer a self-conscious and serious representation of the world we inhabit while actively envisioning new social designs and political configurations. Through comparative studies of novels by Fernanda Melchor, NoViolet Bulawayo, Vivek Shanbhag, Nicola Lagioia, Igiaba Scego, Yaa Gyasi and Roberto Bolaño, this book further explains why realism can be a powerful antidote to the skepticism about the possibility of making truth-claims in humanist research.

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New Global Realism: Thinking Totality in the Contemporary Novel
A comparative study of contemporary realist novels that employ totality as a method and a formal principle to represent the social and economic inequalities of the present, this book examines writing in English, Italian, Kannada, and Spanish by authors from Zimbabwe, Ghana, Italy, India and Mexico.

By theorizing four modalities of totalization employed by contemporary realist writers, this book explores the current resurgence of realism and challenges critical approaches that consider it naive or formally unsophisticated. Instead, it argues that realist novels offer a self-conscious and serious representation of the world we inhabit while actively envisioning new social designs and political configurations. Through comparative studies of novels by Fernanda Melchor, NoViolet Bulawayo, Vivek Shanbhag, Nicola Lagioia, Igiaba Scego, Yaa Gyasi and Roberto Bolaño, this book further explains why realism can be a powerful antidote to the skepticism about the possibility of making truth-claims in humanist research.

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New Global Realism: Thinking Totality in the Contemporary Novel

New Global Realism: Thinking Totality in the Contemporary Novel

New Global Realism: Thinking Totality in the Contemporary Novel

New Global Realism: Thinking Totality in the Contemporary Novel

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Overview

A comparative study of contemporary realist novels that employ totality as a method and a formal principle to represent the social and economic inequalities of the present, this book examines writing in English, Italian, Kannada, and Spanish by authors from Zimbabwe, Ghana, Italy, India and Mexico.

By theorizing four modalities of totalization employed by contemporary realist writers, this book explores the current resurgence of realism and challenges critical approaches that consider it naive or formally unsophisticated. Instead, it argues that realist novels offer a self-conscious and serious representation of the world we inhabit while actively envisioning new social designs and political configurations. Through comparative studies of novels by Fernanda Melchor, NoViolet Bulawayo, Vivek Shanbhag, Nicola Lagioia, Igiaba Scego, Yaa Gyasi and Roberto Bolaño, this book further explains why realism can be a powerful antidote to the skepticism about the possibility of making truth-claims in humanist research.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781350385719
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 03/19/2026
Series: New Horizons in Contemporary Writing
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Gabriele Lazzari is a Lecturer in Contemporary Literature at the University of Surrey, UK.

Bryan Cheyette is Chair in Modern Literature and Culture at the University of Reading. He is the editor or author of ten books, most recently Diasporas of the Mind: Jewish and Postcolonial Writing and the Nightmare of History (2014) and (with Peter Boxall) volume seven of the Oxford History of the Novel in English (on the British and Irish novel, 1940-present) (2016). He reviews contemporary fiction and criticism for the Times Literary Supplement and various newspapers.

Martin Paul Eve is Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. He is the author of Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future (2014); Pynchon and Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Foucault and Adorno (2014); Password (2016); and Literature Against Criticism: University English and Contemporary Fiction in Conflict.

Table of Contents

Introduction – New Global Realism: Totality, Scale, and Humanistic Truth
Chapter 1 – Intensive Localization: Geographies of Violence and Displacement in Fernanda Melchor and NoViolet Bulawayo
Chapter 2 – Combination in the Semi-Peripheral Novel: Vivek Shanbhag and Nicola Lagioia
Chapter 3 – Juxtaposition: Revisiting Histories of Race and Migration in Igiaba Scego and Yaa Gyasi
Chapter 4 – Scaling Up to the Extensive Totality: The Expansive Realism of Roberto Bolaño
Conclusion – Global Comparative Futures
Bibliography

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