New Global Realism: Thinking Totality in the Contemporary Novel (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781350385719)

Shortlisted for the BACLS Monograph Prize 2025

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.

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.

Author: Gabriele Lazzari
ISBN-10: 1350385719
ISBN-13: 9781350385719
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Language: English
Published: 03/19/2026
Pages: 240
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.50d