Postmodern City of Dreadful Night: The image of the city in the works of Martin Amis and Ian McEwan

Abstract

This work attempts to show how the city, as both theme and setting, is used by Martin Amis and Ian McEwan in their selected novels written, with one exception, during the 1980s and 90s. In order to provide theoretical and historical contexts, chapters providing a brief outline of the city as the writer?s object of interest since the late nineteenth century and dealing with Amis?s and McEwan?s characteristic narrative strategies are also included.

Keywords

• Contemporary British fiction
• the city
• otherness
• dystopia
• the millennium
• urban pastoral
• (sub)urban nightmare
• morality tale
• postmodernist narrative techniques