The New Believers
Religion and the Contemporary Novel
The New Believers identifies a group of today's most important novelists, Margaret Atwood, J. M. Coetzee, Junot Díaz, and George Saunders, who have challenged the trend of depressing and defeatist novelistic endings by turning to spiritual beliefs, powers, and presences. Through spiritual belief, these writers use the novel to imagine more hopeful and caring ways of being in the world, ones that can challenge Christian Nationalism and neoliberal capitalism and empower leftist and liberal causes, such as women's rights, migrant rights, animal rights, and care for the environment. Through a survey of the current state of novel studies, close readings of key works by each writer, and new archival research on Margaret Atwood and J. M. Coetzee, The New Believers shows how these writers transform novelistic realism through spiritual realism and reshape the current debate about religion, secularization, and literature.
“Combining inventive close readings and rigorous archival research, The New Believers: Religion and the Contemporary Novel offers a gripping, authoritative, and meticulous account of the important position and function of spirituality in the contemporary novel. The focus is on the 21st-century novels of Margaret Atwood, J. M. Coetzee, Junot Díaz, and George Saunders, but so many other texts and voices enter the conversation: from Augustine to Auden, Stephen King to Jack Chick, St. Matthew to Melville and The Matrix. Dudley’s book is as impressive as it is inspiring.”
-Christos Hadjiyiannis, Assistant Professor in British Studies, University of Regensburg