BOOK NEWS: New perspectives on Ballard's *Crash*

 J. G. Ballard's "Crash"

By Paul March-Russell

Palgrave Macmillan, 2025

ISBN: 978-3-031-73096-2

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-73094-8

J.G. Ballard's Crash (1973) remains a byword for transgression in literature: declared "too disgusting for words" upon publication. The basis for David Cronenberg's equally provocative film, Crash has been regarded variously as the apotheosis of New Wave science fiction, the ur-source for postmodernism, a transhumanist manifesto, and a pornographic masterpiece in the tradition of Sade and Bataille. This revisionist account, based on previously unexplored archive material, shatters the myths that have accrued around this tantalizing work whilst also revealing why it continues to inspire writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers in the 21st century. The book vividly reconstructs how Ballard came to write Crash, the cultural landscape in which it was written, the effect of its reception, and the toll it took on its author. New perspectives reveal how Crash reworks surrealist anthropology, evolutionary theory, and pornographic imagery in order to expose a society addicted to the abuse of power, the silencing of others, and its own environmental destruction. As Ballard later admitted, he "must have been mad" to write Crash.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

“Accessible, thought-provoking and filled with new insights, Paul March Russell’s study of Ballard’s seminal novel is written from a place of finely honed knowledge and contagious enthusiasm. A must-read volume that every Ballardian will want to add to their bookshelf as soon as possible.” --Nina Allan, author of The Rift

“Paul March-Russell writes with an air of quiet authority and moves around the field of Ballard and New Wave science fiction with evident expertise.” --Roger Luckhurst, Geoffrey Tillotson Chair of Nineteenth-Century Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

Paul March-Russell is editor of Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction and co-founder with Una McCormack of the feminist imprint Gold SF. His previous books include The Short Story: An Introduction (2009), Modernism and Science Fiction (2015), and with Andrew M. Butler, Rendezvous with Arthur C. Clarke: Centenary Essays (2022). 

BOOK NEWS: Totality in contemporary global realist fiction

New Global Realism: Thinking Totality in the Contemporary Novel

By Gabriele Lazzari 

Bloomsbury, 2024

ISBN: 9781350385672

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/new-global-realism-9781350385672/

A comparative study of contemporary realist novels that employ totality as a method and a formal principle to represent the social and economic inequalities of the present, this book examines writing in English, Italian, Kannada, and Spanish by authors from Zimbabwe, Ghana, Italy, India, and Mexico.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

By theorizing four modalities of totalization employed by contemporary realist writers, this book explores the current resurgence of realism and challenges critical approaches that consider it naive or formally unsophisticated. Instead, it argues that realist novels offer a self-conscious and serious representation of the world we inhabit while actively envisioning new social designs and political configurations. Through comparative studies of novels by Fernanda Melchor, NoViolet Bulawayo, Vivek Shanbhag, Nicola Lagioia, Igiaba Scego, Yaa Gyasi and Roberto Bolaño, this book further explains why realism can be a powerful antidote to the skepticism about the possibility of making truth-claims in humanist research.

"This is a very exciting book; timely, intellectual, and moving in all the right directions of the future of literary study." --Stephen Shapiro, University of Warwick

Gabriele Lazzari is a lecturer in contemporary literature at the University of Surrey, UK.

BOOK NEWS: The rise of ekphrastic fiction since the 2010s

Art in Contemporary Anglo-American Fiction: The Ekphrastic Novel

By Sofie Behluli

Oxford UP, 2025

ISBN: 9780198954484

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/art-in-contemporary-anglo-american-fiction-9780198954484?cc=us&lang=en&#

This book addresses the recent surge of Anglo-American novels about visual art since the 2010s and interprets it as a coming of age of an old literary sub-genre, which is here termed as the 'ekphrastic novel'. These novels are distinguished by their systematic use of ekphrasis which creatively and critically negotiates the intertwined aesthetics of literature and visual art. By addressing the challenge of representing visual images such as photographs, paintings, and art installations with words, these novels reveal a greater interest in exploring how and why we engage with art, rather than merely depicting the art itself. In this way, ekphrastic novels present themselves as powerful practitioners and critics of contemporary image-making.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

The book focuses on four aspects emerging from ekphrastic passages--value, form, affect, and scale--to explore critical questions posed by contemporary ekphrastic novels: Who has the power to assign value today, and at what cost? Which social, political, historical, cultural, and ethical dimensions are obscured by certain forms, and how can ekphrasis (re)introduce these aspects into public discourse? What affects do images and artworks elicit, and how do they reinforce or challenge existing value systems? How can narrative scale uncover potential injustices in the interplay between life and art? Moreover, what insights do ekphrastic novels offer into contemporary reading habits and strategies? By tracing a literary tradition from nineteenth-century to contemporary fiction and offering detailed close readings of several critically acclaimed and widely read contemporary novels, this book delves into the theoretical and practical intersections of ekphrasis and the novel.

• Explores the intersection of ekphrasis and the novel and introduces a new sub-genre: the 'ekphrastic novel'
• Shows how indebted contemporary novels on art are to their nineteenth-century literary predecessors
• Provides detailed close readings of several critically acclaimed and widely read contemporary novels

Sofie Behluli is an advanced postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern, Switzerland, where she teaches and conducts research on "Dis/affection in 19th-Century American Literature." Prior to holding this post, she completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford. Behluli is interested in intermediality and ekphrasis studies, affect theory, life writing, gender studies and feminist literature, and theoretical conceptions of the contemporary. Her work has been published in Women: A Cultural Review (2021), Anglia: Journal of English Philology (2022), and Contemporary Literary Criticism (2023), as well as in several companions and handbooks.