Abstract
This monograph focuses on contemporary fiction, that is on novels, novellas and short story collections published in the new millennium. Its primary aim is to explore the metamorphoses and developmental tendencies of fiction written in the period which can be labelled as late postmodernism or even post-postmodernism, depending on whether we consider the postmodern project as abating or wholly terminated.
In either case, it is indisputable that for many reasons - historical, social, political, economic and cultural - fiction has been gradually changing over the past two or three decades, moving in the direction away from the postmodernist relativisation, ironic playfulness and self-conscious experimentation and towards more traditional narrative modes and techniques. The aim of the present monograph is to explore how the relationship and mutual interconnectedness between history and identity, together with the related motif of memory, reflect the above mentioned tendencies in contemporary fiction.