Transatlantic Literature and Culture After 9/11 The Wrong Side of Paradise

Looking back on more than a decade of the US-run and UK-supported "war on terror", this volume examines how transatlantic literature and culture have challenged notions of American exceptionalism since September 11, 2001. The essays look not only at but also beyond the compulsion to relive this moment of terror, whether in recurring episodes of silencing trauma or repeating loops of media images. Conceiving of 9/11 as both a uniquely American trauma and a shared event in global history, the collection reexamines Ground Zero through the lenses of imperial power and cosmopolitan exchange. The book's subtitle challenges readers to engage this perspective by rethinking the paradox of paradise, a condition of both never-ending bliss and everlasting death. As the self-appointed economic and military gatekeeper of an imagined global paradise, America plays a dangerous moral and political game. This volume asks whether the United States has perhaps chosen the wrong side of paradise by waging war on terror rather than working for global peace.

Kristine A. Miller is Associate Professor of English at Utah State University, USA. She has published a book, British Literature of the Blitz: Fighting the People's War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), and essays on modern and contemporary literature in Modern Fiction Studies, Genre, the Journal of Modern Literature, Twentieth Century Literature, and Arizona Quarterly.

Introduction: Kristine Miller, 'The Wrong Side of Paradise: American Exceptionalism and the Post-9/11 Special Relationship'
PART I: EMPIRE
1.Phyllis Lassner, 'Paradoxical Polemics: John le Carré's Responses to 9/11'
2.Jim Leach, 'The (Inter)national Bond: James Bond and the 'Special Relationship''
3.Brian McCuskey, '221B-9/11: Sherlock Holmes and Conspiracy Theory'
PART II: COSMOPOLIS
4.Lynda Ng, 'Behind the Face of Terror: Hamid, Malkani, and Multiculturalism After 9/11'
5.M. Neelika Jayawardane, ''Scandalous Memoir': Uncovering Silences and Reclaiming the 'Disappeared' in Mahvish Rukhsana Khan's My Guantánamo Diary'
6.Matthew Brown, 'Joseph O'Neill and the Post-9/11 Novel'
7.Laura Frost, 'An Interview with Joseph O'Neill'
PART III: CITY
8.Lesley Broder, '9/11 Theater: The Story of New York or the Nation?'
9.Graley Herren, 'Flying Man and Falling Man: Remembering and Forgetting 9/11'
10.Crystal Alberts, ''I'm Only Just Starting to Look': Media, Art, and Literature after 9/11'
11.Laura Frost, 'Archifictions: Constructing September 11'
12.Anthony Flinn, 'The New Grotesque in Jess Walter's The Zero: A Commentary and Interview'
Bibliography
Index