Danel Olson is professor at Lone Star College in Houston, Texas.

This is a necessary book. The result of close reading, broad research and personal engagement, it revises our ideas of the relations between narrative and disaster, focussing on 9/11 but in ways that make it apposite to so many other aspects of troubled times. Well-written and vivid, it provides a complex picture of how writers and other people deal with the sudden appearance of trauma in our midst.

• Introduction: Connecting Trauma Theory, 9/11 Novels, Gothic Traditions, and the Unidentified Bones of the World Trade CenterChapter 1: Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007): Deserting and Impersonating the Dead Chapter 2: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005): Searching and Disinterring the DeadChapter 3: Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s The Writing on the Wall (2005): Avenging and Resurrecting the DeadChapter 4: Griffin Hansbury’s The Nostalgist (2012): Conjuring and Romancing the DeadChapter 5: Patrick McGrath’s Ground Zero (2005): Abandoning and Angering the DeadConclusionBibliographyAppendix 1: Further ReadingAppendix 2: Interview at the Opening of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum with Director Alice M. Greenwald, 16 June 2014

Danel Olson is professor at Lone Star College in Houston, Texas.

This is a necessary book. The result of close reading, broad research and personal engagement, it revises our ideas of the relations between narrative and disaster, focussing on 9/11 but in ways that make it apposite to so many other aspects of troubled times. Well-written and vivid, it provides a complex picture of how writers and other people deal with the sudden appearance of trauma in our midst.

• Introduction: Connecting Trauma Theory, 9/11 Novels, Gothic Traditions, and the Unidentified Bones of the World Trade CenterChapter 1: Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007): Deserting and Impersonating the Dead Chapter 2: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005): Searching and Disinterring the DeadChapter 3: Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s The Writing on the Wall (2005): Avenging and Resurrecting the DeadChapter 4: Griffin Hansbury’s The Nostalgist (2012): Conjuring and Romancing the DeadChapter 5: Patrick McGrath’s Ground Zero (2005): Abandoning and Angering the DeadConclusionBibliographyAppendix 1: Further ReadingAppendix 2: Interview at the Opening of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum with Director Alice M. Greenwald, 16 June 2014

Danel Olson is professor at Lone Star College in Houston, Texas.

This is a necessary book. The result of close reading, broad research and personal engagement, it revises our ideas of the relations between narrative and disaster, focussing on 9/11 but in ways that make it apposite to so many other aspects of troubled times. Well-written and vivid, it provides a complex picture of how writers and other people deal with the sudden appearance of trauma in our midst.

• Introduction: Connecting Trauma Theory, 9/11 Novels, Gothic Traditions, and the Unidentified Bones of the World Trade CenterChapter 1: Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007): Deserting and Impersonating the Dead Chapter 2: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005): Searching and Disinterring the DeadChapter 3: Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s The Writing on the Wall (2005): Avenging and Resurrecting the DeadChapter 4: Griffin Hansbury’s The Nostalgist (2012): Conjuring and Romancing the DeadChapter 5: Patrick McGrath’s Ground Zero (2005): Abandoning and Angering the DeadConclusionBibliographyAppendix 1: Further ReadingAppendix 2: Interview at the Opening of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum with Director Alice M. Greenwald, 16 June 2014