The Unsettled State of America

This book explores how contemporary American novelists express the malaise and sense of contingency felt in the crisis-ridden historical present through two distinct tropes in their storytelling: home and mobility. As the American nation has been confronted with an unprecedented accumulation of crises in the years since 9/11, the interrelated concepts of home and mobility have entered plots in imaginative and unique ways. This study focuses on recent novels by Paul Auster (Sunset Park), Cormac McCarthy (The Road), Dave Eggers (A Hologram for the King), Richard Ford (The Lay of the Land and Let Me Be Frank with You) and Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven). Crises can happen at any moment, without much warning— as the recent shock of the pandemic has made all too clear—and the works of fiction by these five authors all explore this underlying sense of threat and uncertainty through the double prism of home and mobility. The book includes excerpts from exclusive interviews with four of these authors.