Identity, Politics and the Novel

Fraser's diverse and wide-ranging book offers an examination of the work of four critically acclaimed novelists, Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Identity), Ian McEwan (Atonement and Saturday), Michel Houellebecq (Atomised and Platform) and J.M. Coetzee (Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year), to aesthetically explore our understanding of identity. The analysis utilises frameworks from classical and contemporary political, philosophical and social theory to explore the notion of the aesthetic self within these texts. Fraser explores these ideas from within the Marxist aesthetic tradition, using theorists such as Friedrich Nietzsche, G. W. F. Hegel, E.P. Thompson, Julia Kristeva, Henri Lefebvre, Albert Camus, Thomas Aquinas and Theodor Adorno. Fraser therefore offers an innovative and unique approach that breaks new ground by developing a Marxist aesthetic account of identity through the medium of contemporary fiction.