Precarious Labour and the Contemporary Novel

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Precarious Labour and the Contemporary Novel

   • Liam Connell

   Pages 1-11

3. Work in the Age of Neoliberalism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 13-13

      PDF

   2. Reading Coupland Backwards: Time, Generationality and Work in Generation X, Microserfs and JPod

      • Liam Connell

      Pages 15-56

   3. Precarity and Subjective Life: Matt Thorne’s Eight Minutes Idle and David Szalay’s London and the South East

      • Liam Connell

      Pages 57-89

4. The Work of Nations

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 91-91

      PDF

   2. Dying to Work: American Nationalism and the End of Productive Labour

      • Liam Connell

      Pages 93-144

   3. Working Women and the Welfare State: Jenny Turner’s The Brainstorm

      • Liam Connell

      Pages 145-187

   4. Indian Call Centres and the National Idea

      • Liam Connell

      Pages 189-232

   5. Conclusion

      • Liam Connell

      Pages 233-240

5. Back Matter

   Pages 241-246

   PDF

This book is a major study of the presentation of work and workers in contemporary novels from India, North America and the UK. Drawing on lively recent theories about work, it shows how the novel is a crucial form for helping us to understand what work means in contemporary society. It tackles some of the most urgent questions of contemporary life by examining the stories about work that novels produce. Including detailed readings of authors such as Douglas Coupland, David Foster Wallace, Joshua Ferris, Arivand Adiga, Chetan Bhagat and Monica Ali it explores how the presentation of fictional characters lays open the experience of insecure and precarious existence in the contemporary era. This study illustrates that novels provide an essential tool for understanding what work is and how we feel when we do it.

• worker isolation in literature
• Generation X
• Microserfs
• JPod
• Douglas Coupland
• Maurizio Lazzarato
• Franco Berardi
• literary critique of neoliberalism
• worker uncertainty in literature
• Judith Butler
• Walter Kirn
• David Foster Wallace
• work theory
• labor theory
• Arivand Adiga
• Chetan Bhagat
• Monica Ali
• worker culture
• workforce globalization
• transnational literature

• University of Brighton, Brighton, United Kingdom

  Liam Connell

Liam Connell is Senior Lecturer English Literature at the University of Brighton. He is the director of Brighton’s C21 Research group. He has written widely on contemporary literature and the questions globalization and transnationalism. He is the co-editor of Globalization and Literature: A Reader (2010).

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