Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction  1

1. Real Virtualities and the Undead Genre  39

Part I. World

2. World-Making and Possible Worlds  69

3. Spectral Worlds, Networked Novel  87

4. From Midnight's Child to Clown Assassin  110

Part II. War

5. Visualizing Wartime: A Literary Genealogy  135

6. The Sky Is Falling: The Narrative Screen of Terror  157

Part III. Witness

7. This I Saw: Graphic Suffering  175

8. Forensic Witnessing: The (Non)Evidence of Bones  192

9. Affective Witnessing: Orphic Netherworlds  219

Coda  249

Notes  261

Bibliography  279

Index  293

"A dense, learned, and important study of the emergence of “this thing called the world” as its inhabitants pass from spectatorship to witnessing of trauma under the prevailing conditions of intensified mediation, remediation, and hypermediation. . . . A rich resource that will be mined by many. . . . Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty."
  — K. Tölölyan, Choice

"This is a brave book, a valiant and valuable book, that seeks to characterize post-1989 fiction as ekphrastically humanitarian." — Eugene Eoyang, World Literature Today

"This Thing Called the World both models and theorizes a grounded approach to modern world literature, urging its critics, despite our habit to look beyond the horizon, not to forget the dirt beneath our own feet." — Christopher McVey, Studies in the Novel

"A dense, learned, and important study of the emergence of “this thing called the world” as its inhabitants pass from spectatorship to witnessing of trauma under the prevailing conditions of intensified mediation, remediation, and hypermediation. . . . A rich resource that will be mined by many. . . . Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty."
  —K. Tölölyan, Choice

"This is a brave book, a valiant and valuable book, that seeks to characterize post-1989 fiction as ekphrastically humanitarian." —Eugene Eoyang, World Literature Today

"This Thing Called the World both models and theorizes a grounded approach to modern world literature, urging its critics, despite our habit to look beyond the horizon, not to forget the dirt beneath our own feet." —Christopher McVey, Studies in the Novel

"In this compelling study, Debjani Ganguly makes a powerful case for novelistic witnessing as a countervailing force in today’s 'mediated deathscapes' of terrorism and state violence. Situated at the intersection of postcolonial theory, world literature, and media studies, This Thing Called the World will interest anyone who wants to think freshly about the function of literature, and of criticism, at the present time."
  — David Damrosch, Harvard University

"This Thing Called the World makes a superb contribution to the study of the contemporary novel and to the energetic debates on world literature. Debjani Ganguly's work is informed throughout by her deep and subtle understanding of the scholarship on the history of the novel and a broad range of literary, media, and political theory. Her close readings of the wellchosen and impressively extensive primary texts are invariably fine and are often stunning in their nuance and insight. An extremely important and significant book."
  — Ian Baucom, author of, Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History

Permission to Photocopy (coursepacks)

If you are requesting permission to photocopy material for classroom use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at copyright.com;

If the Copyright Clearance Center cannot grant permission, you may request permission from our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Permission to Reprint

If you are requesting permission to reprint DUP material (journal or book selection) in another book or in any other format, contact our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Images/Art

Many images/art used in material copyrighted by Duke University Press are controlled, not by the Press, but by the owner of the image. Please check the credit line adjacent to the illustration, as well as the front and back matter of the book for a list of credits. You must obtain permission directly from the owner of the image. Occasionally, Duke University Press controls the rights to maps or other drawings. Please direct permission requests for these images to permissions@dukeupress.edu.
For book covers to accompany reviews, please contact the publicity department.

Subsidiary Rights/Foreign Translations

If you're interested in a Duke University Press book for subsidiary rights/translations, please contact permissions@dukeupress.edu. Include the book title/author, rights sought, and estimated print run.

Disability Requests

Instructions for requesting an electronic text on behalf of a student with disabilities are available here.

Rights & Permissions Contact Information

Email: permissions@dukeupress.edu

Email contact for coursepacks: asstpermissions@dukeupress.edu

Fax: 919-688-4574

Mail:
Duke University Press
Rights and Permissions
905 W. Main Street
Suite 18B
Durham, NC 27701

For all requests please include:

1. Author's name. If book has an editor that is different from the article author, include editor's name also.

2. Title of the journal article or book chapter and title of journal or title of book

3. Page numbers (if excerpting, provide specifics)

For coursepacks, please also note: The number of copies requested, the school and professor requesting

For reprints and subsidiary rights, please also note: Your volume title, publication date, publisher, print run, page count, rights sought