Cover -- Copyright -- Contents -- Series Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Chronology -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 'The space reserved for irony': Irony and Paradox in Don DeLillo's White Noise, Paul Auster's City of Glass and Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho -- Chapter 2 Silence, Secrecy and Sexuality: 'Alternate Histories' in Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres, Carol Shields' The Stone Diaries and Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex -- Chapter 3 'Nes and Yo': Race, Ethnicity and Hybridity in Gish Jen's Mona in the Promised Land, Philip Roth's The Human Stain and Richard Powers' The Time of Our Singing -- Chapter 4 Contemporary American Fiction Goes to Hollywood: Genre in the Texts and Films of Cold Mountain, Brokeback Mountain and No Country for Old Men -- Conclusion -- Student Resources -- Index.