Borders and Border Crossings in the Contemporary British Short Story

Acknowledgements
Contents
Notes on Contributors
1 Introduction: Border(ing)s in Contemporary Short Stories of the British Isles
	The Resurgence of Borders in the Contemporary World
	Research on Border Phenomena
	The Short Story and the Border
	Survey of Chapters
	Works Cited
Part I Geopolitics and Grievable Lives
2 Glimpses of a Divided Kingdom in Zadie Smith’s Short Stories of the 2010s
	Introduction
	Zadie Smith, the Short Story, and Thinking a Divided Society
	“The Embassy of Cambodia”: Walls in Multicultural London
	“Meet the President”: Borders in a Dystopia of Globalisation
	“The Lazy River”: Post-Brexit Resignation
	Conclusion
	Works Cited
3 Refugee Fictions: Brexit and the Maintenance of Borders in the European Union
	Introduction
	Stories of the Jungle
	Taking Back Control
	Conclusion
	Works Cited
4 The Border Lives of the Unmourned: Olumide Popoola’s Refugee Stories “Counting Down” and “Expect Me”
	The Borders of Representation
	The Short Story as Vehicle for the Refugee Experience
	Physical and Symbolic Borders in “Counting Down” and “Expect Me”
	The Value of Human Life
	Non-normative Subjectivities
	Crossing Borders: Telling the Invisibles into Existence
	Works Cited
5 Global Travel and In/Voluntary Border Crossings: Anne Enright’s “The Hotel”
	Introduction
	The Boundaries of the Short Story
	“A Fiction for the Times”?
	Hotels and Airports as Spaces of Transition
	The Borderline Between Reality and Hallucination
	The Borderline Between Traveller and Migrant
	The Borderline Between Past and Present
	Spectator and Participant, Self and Other
	Works Cited
6 A Permeable Fortress: European Tales of Global Conflict
	Introduction
	The Nation and the Border
	Crossing Borders, Living Lives: Nicholas Shakespeare’s “The Death of Marat”
	Ian Parkinson’s “A Belgian Story”
	Kamila Shamsie’s “The Desert Torso”
	Conclusion: Keeping Out and Seeping In. Global Conflicts and the Border
	Works Cited
Part II Ethnicity and Liminal Identities
7 Stranded in a Border Zone: Traumatic Liminality in Black British Short Stories
	Introduction
	Generic Liminality
	The Dark Side of Postcolonial Unbelonging
	Koye Oyedeji’s “Home”
	Pete Kalu’s “Getting Home”
	Valda Jackson’s “An Age of Reason”
	Conclusion
	Works Cited
8 Border Experiences and Liminal Identities in Andrea Levy’s Short Stories
	Introduction: Liminal Identities and the Short Story
	Britain’s Caribbean History: “That Polite Way That English People Have”
	Memories of the Great War: The Borders of Empire in “Uriah’s War”
	Conclusion
	Works Cited
9 Sartorial Borders and Border Crossing in Contemporary Multi-ethnic Short Stories
	Introduction: Fashion Theory and the Short Story
	“A Pair of Jeans”: Intersections of Gender and Ethnicity in the Liminal Space of Diaspora
	Conclusion: After “A Pair of Jeans”—A Brief Note on Other Reassessments
	Works Cited
Part III Animal Encounters and Metamorphic Bodies
10 Indifferent Borders: Confined and Liminal Spaces in Sarah Hall’s “Bees”
	Introduction
	Images of Dislocation
	Images of Enclosure
	Images of the City
	Images of Encounter
	Conclusion
	Works Cited
11 Human into Animal: Post-anthropomorphic Transformations in Sarah Hall’s “Mrs Fox”
	Introduction
	Transgressing the Human–Animal Border in “Mrs Fox”
	Towards a Post-anthropomorphic Ethic
	Liminal Spaces of Encounter
	Conclusion
	Works Cited
12 Weird Border Crossings in China Miéville’s “Looking for Jake”, “The Tain” and “Säcken”
	Introduction
	From Weird to New Weird
	“Looking for Jake”: An Absence that Summons Presence
	“The Tain”: Misrecognition and Material Identity
	“Säcken”: The Law and the Horror of Forced Interspecies Becoming
	Conclusion
	Works Cited
13 Liminal Territory in the Fenland Stories of Jon McGregor and Daisy Johnson
	Introduction
	Jon McGregor
	Daisy Johnson
	Conclusion
	Works Cited
Part IV The Short Story, Borders and Intermediality
14 Strangers at the Gates: Intermediality, Borders and the Short Story
	Introduction: The Rattling of Gates
	Intermediality of Form: There Are Many Ways to Move Through Gates
	The Discourses of History: Strange Voices at the Perimeters
	Uncertainty of Narrator: Whose Voices Are We Hearing at the Gates?
	Between Fable and Realist Story: If There Is a Gate, a Wall, a City, There Is a Fable
	The High Art/Low Art Border: Only Certain Art Can Pass Through These Gates
	The Hordes at the Gates: If We Breed with Them We Will Produce Mutants
	Two Gates Become One: Reader Cognitive Dissonance and How the Racial Empathy Gap Is Closed in “Keeper”
	The Babel of Tongues at the Gates: Hybridity Made Manifest in “Keeper”’s Lexicon
	Endings: The Gates Flung Open
	Works Cited
15 Liminal Encounters Between Literature and Music in Contemporary British Women’s Short Stories
	Introduction
	The Interartistic Dialogue with Music and the Short Story in the Context of Liminality
	Candia McWilliam’s “Theory and Practice”
	Helen Simpson’s “Corporate Entertainment”
	Conclusion
	Works Cited
Index