Böcker i Bloomsbury Studies in the City-serien

Contemporary writers such as Peter Ackroyd, J.G. Ballard, John King, Ian McEwan, Will Self, Iain Sinclair and Zadie Smith have been registering the changes to the social and cultural London landscape for years. This volume brings together their vivid representations of the capital.Uniting the readings are themes such as relationship between the country and the city; the capacity of satirical forms to encompass the ''real London''; spatio-temporal transformations and emergences; the relationship between multiculturalism and universalism; the underground as the spatial equivalent of London''s unconsciousness and the suburbs as the frontier of the future. The volume creates a framework for new approaches to the representation of London required by the unprecedented social uncertainties of recent years: an invaluable contribution to studies of contemporary writing about London.

The presence of Irish writers is almost invisible in literary studies of London. Irish Writing London redresses the critical deficit. A range of experts on particular Irish writers reflect on the diverse experiences and impact this immigrant group has had on the city. Such sustained attention to a location and concern of Irish writing, long passed over, opens up new terrain to not only reveal but create a history of Irish-London writing. Alongside discussions of Wilde, Shaw, Joyce and Yeats, the writing of the political nationalist Katharine Tynan and work of Irish-Language writer Ó Conaire is considered. Written by an international array of scholars, these new essays on key figures challenge the deep-seated stereotype of what constitutes the proper domain of Irish writing, producing a study that is both culturally and critically alert and a dynamic contribution to literary criticism of the city.