Contemporary Womens Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

This book examines how contemporary women novelists have successfullytransformed and rewritten the conventions of post-apocalyptic fiction. Since thedawn of the new millennium, there has been an outpouring of writing that depicts the end of the world as we know it, and women writers are no exception to thistrend. However, the book argues that their fiction is distinctive. Contemporarywomen's work in this genre avoids conservatism, a nostalgic mourning for the past, and the focus on restoring what has been lost, aspects key to much male authoredapocalyptic fiction. Instead, contemporary women writers show readersthe ways in which patriarchy and neo-colonialism are intrinsically implicated inthe disasters they envision, and offer qualified hope for a new beginning forsociety, culture and literature after an imagined apocalyptic event. Exploringscience, nature and matter, the posthuman body, the maternal imaginary, time, narrativeand history, literature and the word, and the post-secular, the bookcovers a wide variety of writers and addresses issues of nationality, race andethnicity, as well as gender and sexuality.