Transmodern Literatures in the 21st Century

Claus-Peter Neumann is Associate Professor in the Department of English and German Studies at the University of Zaragoza, where he teaches US Literature as well as English Drama and Theatre. His research covers a wide variety of topics, including English and American literature, Second Language Acquisition, English for Specific Purposes, discourse analysis, and the Spanish “novela negra.” Within the field of literature, he has mainly focused on the examination of gender relations and desire, the representation of war and its aftermath as well as the questioning of borders and the concomitant deconstruction of self versus Other in recent US theatre. He has published on Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Vladimir Nabokov, Jerzy Kosinski, and Tony Kushner, amongst others, in international journals such as Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos, and The Journal of American Drama and Theatre.Pilar Royo-Grasa is Associate Professor in the Department of English and German Studies at the University of Zaragoza, where she teaches English Literature and Language. She was also Visiting Scholar at the Universities of New South Wales (Australia), Northampton (UK), Regensburg (Germany), and Masaryk (Czech Republic). Between October 2015 and January 2018, she served as Secretary of the European Association for Studies of Australia (EASA). In 2025, she was awarded a scholarship to attend the University of Auckland as a Visiting Fellow, where she researched on human mobility induced by climate change in literary works by South Pacific authors. Her main research interests are contemporary Australian fiction, postcolonial literature, trauma studies, human rights, and migration narratives. She is the author of the monograph Trauma, Australia and Gail Jones’s Fiction (1996-2007) (Peter Lang 2022) and has published articles in international journals such as Journal of Postcolonial Writing, The European Legacy, Humanities, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, Journal of the European Association for the Studies of Australia, and Commonwealth Essays and Studies.

• List of ContributorsIntroduction: Transmodern Literatures Of(f) the Limits Pilar Royo-Grasa and Claus-Peter NeumannPART IGeographical, Racial and Ethnic Limits1. Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West as a Transmodern Narrative of(f) the LimitAngelo Monaco2. Otherwise Vancouver in Black Speculative Fiction: from a Dialectic of Conquest to Transmodern Coalitions of SolidarityFernando Pérez-García3. (Writing about) Writing about Limits: Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus ProjectChinmaya Lal ThakurPART IILimits of the Human4. ‘There Never Was a Wilder Story Imagined’: Posthumanist Conceit and Transmodernity in Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein: A Love StoryVanja Polić5. Posthuman identities and the Transmodern Paradigm Through Fairy Tales: Marissa Meyer’s “The Little Android”Sidia Fiorato6. Special Relativity, Real-Time Communications and Vulnerability in Outer Space and Lauren James’s The Loneliest Girl in the UniverseJessica Aliaga-Lavrijsen7. Nnedi Okorafor’s Remote Control (2021) and Its Africanfuturist Transmodern Agenda: Harnessing the Past to Understand the Present and Improve the FutureDolores Herrero8. Speaking of Fracture: Intercultural Dialogue and the Transmodern Perception of Time and Experience in N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth TrilogyAdriana LobatoPART III: Relationality and Community 9. Jon McGregor’s Transmodern Ethics of Re-enchantment in If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable ThingsSusana Onega10. Spatialising the Transmodern in Jim Crace’s The MelodyPetr Chalupský11. Intimations of a Life Well Lived: Beyond Food as Metaphor in Inga Simpson’s Mr WiggBárbara Arizti12. Fragility and (Dis-)Connection in David Szalay’s Turbulence María Jesús Martínez13. Dissolving Limits in Tom McCarthy’s Satin IslandJustine GonneaudEPILOGUEThe Ultimate Limit—NOW: Future Narratives and the Present Moment as Conversion Point of Potentiality into Actuality Christoph BodeIndex