Writing the 9/11 Decade : Reportage and the Evolution of the Novel

Writing the 9/11 Decade investigates the relation of the novel to reportage, and the role of both
in shaping culture, by looking at novelists' journalistic responses to the September 11 attacks.

Journalist and academic Charlie Lee-Potter argues that novelists were entrapped by the
expectation that they would provide an immediate non-fiction response to 9/11. Beginning with
an examination of the sometimes mawkish writing that emerged in the days after the attacks,
Writing the 9/11 Decade traces the evolution of literary journalism – in writers such as Ian
McEwan, Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Mohsin Hamid and Nadeem Aslam – into new methods
of subsuming the disaster, while attempting to stand apart from it. It includes interviews with
novelists such as Richard Ford, Amy Waldman and Kamila Shamsie, as well as the only longform
interview granted by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who is
himself a 9/11 survivor.

In assessing the novel's capacity to respond to and contain an unimagined traumatic event,
Writing the 9/11 Decade stands as a contemporary history of the form.

“Writing the 9/11 Decade takes a unique approach by situating 9/11 novels within the larger contexts provided by journalism, art, and popular culture and supplementing its nuanced analysis of those novels with in-depth interviews from authors and other figures who played a significant role in interpreting the September 11 attacks for the American public … [It] will be of value to scholars who study collective memory and popular culture, as well as any readers interested in better understanding the ways that meaning gets made in the aftermath of collective trauma.” - American Literature

"A brilliant and original post-mortem on the literary response to 9/11. Charlie Lee-Potter's searching examination of some of the key novels that were written in the aftermath of the catastrophe sheds a sometimes uncomfortable light on contemporary fiction and its uneasy relationship with journalism and the wider culture." - Mark Thompson, President and Chief Executive Officer, The New York Times Company, USA

"This is a scholarly and wise account of how writers came to terms with the unspeakable horrors of 9/11. Charlie Lee-Potter’s experience in journalism, and her analysis of how authors of fiction responded to the catastrophe in New York, combine into a compelling account of how we tell a story that has changed the age in which we live." - Roger Mosey, former Head of BBC Television News and Master of Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, UK

"If journalism offers the first, flawed, draft of history, fiction has time and space for a richer, more personal, response. Charlie Lee-Potter invites us to reassess the meaning of 9/11 and, through fiction, the shadow it continues to cast across our lives." - Richard Sambrook, former Director of BBC News and Professor of Journalism, Cardiff University, UK