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TEHRAN, Jan 6 - With Britain's decision to leave the EU exposing fault lines across society, fiction writers are responding with an increasing array of Brexit-infused work -- from state-of-the-nation novels to futuristic satire.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Brexit's influence has spread to books by established authors like Ali Smith and Jonathan Coe as well as those of debut novelists, pushing writers to examine often overlooked parts of the country and social themes.
The genre -- dubbed "Brex-lit" by the Financial Times -- spans dystopian visions based on the angst of europhiles and more reflective novels probing the apparent divides.
Some of the authors said they wanted to use storytelling simply to highlight the divides laid bare by the 2016 referendum.
Commissioned by European publisher Peirene to write something in response, Anthony Cartwright's short novel "The Cut" depicts an urbane documentary-maker's short-lived and ill-fated romance with a labourer.
Set in a working class corner of the West Midlands, the pair struggle to comprehend each other and their respective worlds.
Some of the books are set in parts of Britain often ignored in literature -- like the Brexit heartlands of eastern England in Adam Thorpe's "Missing Fay" and the West Midlands, where much of Coe's state-of-the-nation tome "Middle England" is set.
Thorpe's novel centres around the disappearance of a teenager from a run-down housing project.
His portrayal of life in a small Lincolnshire town was written mostly before the referendum.
It only became a so-called "Brexit novel" because the "poverty and sense of hopelessness" depicted in it had helped explain the result, Thorpe said.
"Novelists who want to reflect their times have to have finely-tuned antennae, picking up signals that the population in general ignore," he said.
He nonetheless remained cautious about letting too much politics into the story.
Source: AFP
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