Publications

Monograph:

  • Contemporary Fictions of Multiculturalism: Diversity and the Millennial London Novel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Abstract: London is one of the most diverse cities in human history. While its multicultural character has been widely celebrated in recent decades – by writers of fiction as much as by anyone – more recently multiculturalism has been said to have ‘failed’, or to have never really existed in the first place. How have recent works of fiction engaged with London's multiculturalism, and could that multiculturalism itself be regarded as a kind of ‘fiction’?

This study analyses a number of key contemporary texts (including Brick Lane, White Teeth, Small Island and Pigeon English) that engage with questions about ethnic and cultural diversity in London. It argues that in recent years the most successful and engaging works of literature about the city have attempted to assert its diversity as undeniable whilst also challenging the notion that London is an inclusive utopia which offers sanctuary and prosperity to its migrants.

Forthcoming Monographs:

  • Andrea Levy: Contemporary World Writers (forthcoming; under contract with Manchester UP).

  • Migrants to the Screen: Contemporary Transnational Fiction in Adaptation (in development).

Journal Articles and Book Chapters:

  • ‘Hanif Kureishi: Fundamentalism and Multiculturalism’. The British Novel of Ideas: George Eliot to Zadie Smith, eds. Matthew Taunton and Rachel Potter (Cambridge UP, forthcoming).

  • ‘Some Unsung Songs: Andrea Levy’s Late, Unpublished Work’. ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 53: 1-2 (2022), 257-291. Link to article

  • ‘Afterlives, Aftermaths: Levy Studies in the Twenty-First Century’. Co-written with Henghameh Saroukhani and Sarah Lawson Welsh. ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 53: 1-2 (2022), 7-24. Link to article

  • ‘“Black holes in the fabric of the nation”: Refugees in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West’. Journal for Cultural Research 23: 2 (2019), 187-201. Link to article

  • ‘“He wished to defend a country that wasn’t his”: British Subjects and Servicemen in Andrea Levy’s Small Island and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth’. Long Shadows: The Second World War in British Literature and Film, 1943 to the present, ed. Petra Rau (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 2016), 241-262. Link to book on publisher's website

  • ‘Reluctant Fundamentalist, Eager Host? Cross-cultural Hospitality and Security Anxieties in Mohsin Hamid's Novel of Uncertainty’. Security and Hospitality: New Literary and Cultural Perspectives, eds Emily Ridge and Jeffrey Clapp (London: Routledge, 2015), 190-207. Link to chapter

  • ‘The Enigma of Abandonment: Re-thinking the Importance of Hanif Kureishi’s Work for Multiculturalism’. Hanif Kureishi: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, ed. Susan Alice Fischer (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 7-20. Link to book on publisher's website

  • ‘Salman Rushdie’. Dictionary of Literary Biography 377: Twenty-first Century British Novelists, ed. Tom Ue (Farmington, MI: Gale, 2015), 258-283. Link to book on publisher's website

  • ‘Monica Ali’. The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Contemporary British and Irish Literature, eds Richard Bradford et al. (Wiley & Sons, 2020), 471-80. Link to piece

  • ‘Lives of Pi: on Turning Booker Prizes into Academy Awards’. Anglophone Culture Across Centuries and Borders: Proceedings from an International Cultural Studies Conference, eds Pavlína Flajšarová and Jiří Flajšar (Olomouc: University of Palacky Press, 2015), 51-61. Link to piece

  • ‘Existing in more than one plane of time: Memory and Narrative Form in Every Light in the House Burnin’’. Andrea Levy: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, eds Jeannette Baxter and David James (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 39-52. Link to book on publisher's website

  • ‘“Fold the paper and pass it on”: Historical Silences and the Contrapuntal in Andrea Levy’s Fiction’. The Journal of Postcolonial Writing 46: 1 (2010), 31-41. Link to article

  • 'The Multicultural Bildungsroman: Stereotypes in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane’. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 43: 3 (2008), 109-120. Link to article


As Editor:

  • Co-editor, with Henghameh Saroukhani and Sarah Lawson Welsh, ‘In Memoriam: Andrea Levy Special Issue’. ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 53: 1-2 (2022). Link to special issue

  • Co-editor, with Bill Mayblin, of two pieces of posthumous work by Andrea Levy, both published in special Levy-themed double issue of ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 53: 1-2 (2022):

      • Levy, Andrea. ‘Selected Excerpts from The Adventures of Mrs Seacole (2012)’. 295-309. Link to piece

      • Levy, Andrea. ‘Two’. 313-15. Link to piece


Contributions to Reference Works

  • ‘Salman Rushdie: Haroun and the Sea of Stories’. The Literary Encyclopedia, 2016. Link to piece

  • ‘Don DeLillo: Underworld’. The Literary Encyclopedia, 2012. Link to piece

    • ‘Andrea Levy’. The Literary Encyclopedia, 2009; updated 2020. Link to piece

    • 'Andrea Levy: The Long Song'. The Literary Encyclopedia, 2020. Link to piece

    • ‘Andrea Levy: Small Island’. The Literary Encyclopedia, 2010. Link to piece


Selected Reviews:

  • Review of Flajsavora, Pavlina, Diaspora in the Fiction of Andrea Levy (Olomouc: Palacky University, 2014). The Journal of Postcolonial Writing 51: 6 (2015), 752-753. Link to journal

  • Review of Davison, Sarah, Modernist Literatures (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). The Literary London Journal 12: 1-2 (Spring/Autumn 2015). Link to piece

  • Review of Sadikali, Tamim, Dear Infidel (London: Hansib, 2014). The Literary London Journal 12: 1-2 (Spring/Autumn 2015). Link to piece

  • Review of Colombino, Laura, Spatial Politics in Contemporary London Literature: Writing Architecture and the Body (Oxford: Routledge, 2013). The Literary London Journal 10: 2 (Autumn 2013). Link to piece


Selected Other Writing:

  • ‘The Death of an Author'. Co-written with Henghameh Saroukhani and Sarah Lawson Welsh. ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 54: 1 (2023), 131-34.

  • ‘Introduction to Andrea Levy’s “Selected Excerpts from The Adventures of Mrs Seacole”’, ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 53: 1-2 (2022), 293-294. Link to piece

  • ‘More vital now than ever: My research on Andrea Levy’. Blog piece, LJMU website, 8 July 2020. Link to piece

  • ‘Studying for a humanities PhD can make you feel cut off from humanity’, The Guardian Higher Education Network, 8 July 2014. Link to piece

  • Contributor to ‘Finishing your PhD thesis: 15 top tips from those in the know’. The Guardian Higher Education Network, 27 August 2014. Link to piece

  • ‘On Saving’ (short story), Mays 17, ed. Patti Smith (Cambridge: Varsity Publications, 2009), 127-131. Link to book on publisher's website