This MA module will enable students to explore the relationship between formal innovation in the contemporary novel and the expression of social, political, and ethical questions. The syllabus will include fiction that reworks longstanding genres (science fiction, the picaresque, apocalyptic parables) as well as texts that move into striking new territories of linguistic and thematic experimentation. Across the module, we will encounter writers that invite readers to reflect on the cultural status, aesthetic potential, and political mission of the novel as a form. In turn we will be considering how such texts relate to emerging critical debates and approaches that have shaped the very terms with which fiction might be classified and evaluated in the twenty-first century. Students will thus have the opportunity to engage both stylistically and historically with discrete moments of transition in postmillennial writing, moments that compel us to consider how contemporary novelists are inspiring new modes of interpretation. Secondary criticism and theoretical frames will be integrated as the weeks unfold. Students will be encouraged to devise and develop their own avenues of inquiry in preparation for the final assessment on a topic of their choice.