Inventions of the Present. A Novel in the Crisis of Globalization

What happens to the novel in the conditions of the crisis of globalization? Why can't the literature of recent decades speak in the same language as before? In his latest book, Fredric Jameson reflects on the novels of dozens of authors and discusses writers as such—from Joseph Conrad and Vasily Grossman to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Margaret Atwood. For Jameson, the novel is not so much a reflection of reality as a tool capturing the deep contradictions of the late capitalist epoch. Jameson reinvents the form of the historical novel, developing his own method of "materialist formalism", which helps us envision writers from various countries and eras as inventors of the "present" that no longer exists, but in which we all have to live.