One of the preeminent figures of contemporary literature, David Foster Wallace has assembled the variety of his influences – Jorge Luis Borges, John Barth, Robert Coover, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon – and saved them from the self-immolation it seemed that academia was increasingly drawing them t

Anxiety, Citational, Complex, Expansive, Layered, Postmodern fiction, Sincere, Slangy, Smart, Subtle, Witty

Baroque, Beautiful , Composed, Dense, Elegant, Essays, Implosive, Layered, Playful, Postmodern fiction, Repetition, Science fiction, Surreal, Surrealist literature, Whimsical

Fairy tales, Gothic fiction, a baroque sensibility, feminism, gender bending, and science fiction: from this mélange emerges Angela Carter's fiction. A phantasmagoric opus that wavers between the horrific, the erotic, and the humorous, Carter's work is a series of appropriations and transformation

Fantastic, Fantasy, Feminist, Lyrical, Mythic, Postmodern fiction, Women's literature

It should seem patently absurd that Donald Barthelme is currently undergoing a period of rediscovery. It was only in 1963 that his first prose piece was published, and by the mid-60s he had established himself as a writer – particularly of short stories – of tremendous potential, having generat

Abstract, Absurd, Collage, Experimental, Fleeting, Pioneering, Playful, Pop, Postmodern fiction