Borders and Border Crossings in the Contemporary British Short Story

This book represents a contribution to both border studies and short story studies. In today's world, there is ample evidence of the return of borders worldwide: as material reality, as a concept, and as a way of thinking. This collection of critical essays focuses on the ways in which the contemporary British short story mirrors, questions and engages with border issues in national and individual life. At the same time, the concept of the border, as well as neighbouring notions of liminality and intersectionality, is used to illuminate the short story's unique aesthetic potential. The first section, "Geopolitics and Grievable Lives", includes chapters that address the various ways in which contemporary stories engage with our newly bordered world and borders within contemporary Britain. The second section examines how British short stories engage with "Ethnicity and Liminal Identities", while the third, "Animal Encounters and Metamorphic Bodies", focuses on stories concernedwith epistemological borders and borderlands of existence and identity. Taken together, the chapters in this volume demonstrate the varied and complex ways in which British short stories in the twenty-first century engage with the concept of the border.

Barbara Korte is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Freiburg, Germany.

Laura Mª Lojo-Rodríguez is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Autorentext

Barbara Korte is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Freiburg, Germany.

Laura Mª Lojo-Rodríguez is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Inhalt
Chapter 1: Introduction: Border(ing)s in Contemporary Short Stories of the British Isles.- Chapter 2: Glimpses of a Divided Kingdom in Zadie Smith's Short Stories of the 2010s.- Part I: Grievable Lives and Refugees' Tales.- Chapter 3: Refugee Fictions: Brexit and the Maintenance of Borders in the European Union.- Chapter 4: The Border Lives of the Unmourned: Olumide Popoola's Refugee Stories.- Chapter 5: Global Travel and In/voluntary Border Crossings: Anne Enright's The Hotel.- Chapter 6: A Permeable Fortress: European Tales of Global Conflict.- Part II: Ethnicity and Liminal Identities.- Chapter 7: Stranded in a Border Zone: Traumatic Liminality in Black British Short Stories.- Chapter 8: Border Experiences and Liminal Identities in Andrea Levy's Short Stories.- Chapter 9: Sartorial Borders and Border Crossing in Contemporary Multi-Ethnic Short Stories.- Part III: Animal Encounters and Metamorphic Bodies.- Chapter 10: Indifferent Borders: Confined and Liminal Spaces in Sarah Hall's Bees.- Chapter 11: Human Into Animal: Post-Anthropomorphic Transformations in Sarah Hall's Mrs Fox.- Chapter 12: Weird Border Crossings in China Miéville's Looking for Jake, The Tain and Säcken.- Chapter 13: Liminal Territory in the Fenland Stories of Jon McGregor and Daisy Johnson.- Part IV: The Short Story, Borders and Intermediality.- Chapter 14: Strangers at the Gates: Intermediality, Borders and the Short Story.- Chapter 15: Liminal Encounters between Literature and Music in Contemporary British.