New Areas of Novel Writing

 At the onset of the twentieth century, Western fiction grew modern and shed many images such as Victorian, realistic, and its image of what Malcom Bradbury calls "the great instrument of social representation". It found a place for itself when paradigms were shifting, along with expectations, desires and imagination. At the end of the twentieth century different forms of the novel had taken centre stage. By the time we entered the new millennium the novel as a genre saw striking changes. A large number of writers who had contributed tremendously to post war British fiction had died. Novelists such as, Graham Greene (died in 1991), William Golding and Anthony Burgess (1993), Kingsley Amis (1995), Iris Murdoch (1999) and Penelope Fitzgerald in 2000, Arthur C Clarke in March, 2008. The millennium offered great cultural excitement and impetus to new writers. But what was also happening is that some essential notions of the novel and its Britishness were rapidly dissolving and getting lost and the stage was now set for writers from other cultures such as from Scotland, Ireland and India to name just a few.

Moreover, the changes also occurred in writing that began to emerge from different perspectives both on myth as well as reality and we saw fiction/ novels from America, Australia, South America, Caribbean, India, Africa, Ireland and other postcolonial countries. By the mid - twentieth century most former British colonies had regained their independence from Britain. These former colonies were to be renamed Commonwealth countries, and later postcolonial countries and a vast body of writing emerged from these countries. The novel these days has taken on a vast "variety of voices, forms and manners", and is randomly open "to all styles, all attitudes, all kinds of performances, along with equal randomness of judgement about what is serious, worthwhile, valuable, authoritative" (Malcolm Bradbury, p. 521).

The most striking feature of the novel today is its sheer plurality, its diversity and mixed origins. Bradbury finds the novel in the millennium dealing with history and the novelist's relationship with the past and he gives the example of A S Byatt's Booker novel Possession: A Romance. Other writers who were interested in the relationship between history and the fable include: Penelope Fitzgerald (Innocence, 1986, The Blue Flower (1995), Kazuo Ishiguro (The Unconsoled, 1995), Tibor Fischer (Under the Frog, 1992, The Collector Collector, 1997). But all said and done, fiction or the novel is at its richest in the millennium. There are certain themes that recur through novels, (and the list is the one prepared by Bradbury):

apocalyptic cities, gender wars, gay and lesbian relations, marital ! coll&pse, feminist self- discovery, football fever, serial killers, child abuse, New age consciousness, laddish girls and girlish lads. (p. 539)

He also says that social comedy has replaced hard satire and that "dark horrors , have replaced familiar lives", that, "serious literary fiction in under profound pressure from the commercial", and "Grand Narratives are giving way to more I plural and playful themes". Before we conclude it needs to be mentioned that I the novel still survives, it proliferates and penetrates. It has seen many deaths but it seems to be thriving and expanding its boundaries, cultures and horizons.

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