Overview

What does it feel like to experience the sacred today? Examining in detail many of this century’s most significant writers, including Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Elizabeth Strout, Marilynne Robinson, Mohsin Hamid, Michael Chabon, Howard Jacobson and Don DeLillo, Divinity, Hospitality and the Posthuman in 21st-Century Literature: The Material Sacred argues that contemporary social and cultural forms, most especially those of 21st century literature, are marked by what Emily McAvan calls a material sacred. Placing Christian, Jewish and Muslim writers in conversation with the new materialisms, this book shows how secular and sacred mix unpredictably in contemporary writing. In this important contribution to the understanding of religion, materialism and literature, McAvan maps new territory, arguing that the material sacred shows us that the human and non-human, the divine and the profane, have been interwoven from the start.

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9781350280373

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McAven’s stunning readings of the “material sacred” within contemporary novels reveals 21st-century-fiction’s preoccupation with a world imbued with divine resonance. Postsecular Fiction importantly expands our understanding of vital issues such as forgiveness, disbelief, hospitality, and trauma as it unearths these novelists’ explorations of humanity’s vital relationship with the world. * Jo Carruthers, Lancaster University, UK *

Author Information

Emily McAvan is a Teaching Associate, Monash University, Australia, and a specialist in the study of religion and literature. Her most recent work Jeanette Winterson and Religion (Bloomsbury, 2020) is the first study of the sacred and profane in Winterson’s work. Her articles on religion and literature have been published by Literature and Theology, among many others.

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