The Political Novel in the Age of its Impotence:

Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

Deutsches Haus at Columbia University

As a genre, the novel seems ill-suited to the whims of the twenty-first century. What once made writers praise the novel as quintessentially modern—its discursive capaciousness, its ability to incorporate other genres within itself—appears less impressive in the digital age, where new forms are constantly being produced and character-limits reign king. As many a cultural critic has lamented, no one has the attention span to finish a novel anymore. Even if we set aside our current obsession with AI and social media, the novel still seems constitutionally ill-suited to political messaging. The very act of reading a novel stagnates political action: reading takes time, of course, but also demands isolation and a retreat from collective life. And yet, even today, writers are still turning to the novel as a tool for political persuasion. What do these novels understand themselves to be doing? How do they work? By investigating recent political novels in German, especially from the far right, this talk argues that the contemporary political novel is preoccupied with the question of its own efficacy. With Sophie SalvoSophie Salvo is Assistant Professor in Germanic Studies and the College at the University of Chicago *Light reception to follow

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The Political Novel in the Age of its Impotence:

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