This study of contemporary Irish expatriate fiction offers a boldly original world-facing rather than nation-focused overview of the contemporary Irish novel. Chapters examine how Irish narrative deals with the United States in a time of declining global hegemony, a rising China and Asia, a thwarted and turbulent Global South, and a European Union that has decisively reshaped Ireland in the last half century. The author argues that in a late capitalist world defined by volatile economic and cultural globalizations, the Irish novel is struggling to imagine new ways to narrate the country's relationship to the world capitalist system and to find new place for Irish writing in the world literary system. Looking at a rapidly-changing Ireland in a rapidly-changing international order, Joe Cleary offers new readings of novels by Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright, Joseph O'Neill, Deirdre Madden, Mary Costello, Naoise Dolan, Aidan Higgins, Colum McCann, Ronan Sheehan and Ronan Bennett.

Winner, 2022 Robert Rhodes Prize for Books on Literature, American Conference for Irish Studies

'… an essential account of how and why we have arrived where we are.'

Matthew Eatough Source: LA Review of Books

‘a hugely important contribution to Irish Studies … a very significant work because it establishes terms on which scholars of the contemporary Irish novel will need to engage. It also lays the foundations for those engagements by providing a foundational theoretical framework; indeed, for such scholars, this book will be indispensable.’

Eoghan Smith Source: Irish Studies Review

‘The Irish Expatriate Novel in Late Capitalist Globalization is a very significant work because it establishes terms on which scholars of the contemporary Irish novel will need to engage. It also lays the foundations for those engagements by providing a foundational theoretical framework; indeed, for such scholars, this book will be indispensable.’

Eoghan Smith