Faces of Crisis in 20th-and 21st-Century Prose. An Anthology of Criticism offers a unique overview of the motif of crisis tackled by 20th-and 21st-century novelists. In one way or another, crisis has always been an inevitable part of our lives and it is still a central aspect of the contemporary world, in which we are constantly inundated with information about economic, environmental, and health threats.


The anthology is divided into three parts pertaining to the main themes of the articles. The first section “Selves in Crisis” is concerned with personal and identity crisis. The second part “Bonds in Crisis” is devoted to interpersonal relationships and family ties. The third section “Worlds in Crisis” deals with threats on a global scale, both in the present and in the future. Focused on the main theme, literary scholars from different European universities tackle the problem of crisis from various perspectives, analysing works by authors such as James Joyce, Vita Sackville-West, Charles Hamilton Sorley, Daphne du Maurier, D.H. Lawrence, B.S. Johnson, Ann Quin, Zoë Wicomb, Rachel Seiffert, Sarah Waters, Diane Setterfield, Boualem Sansal, Philip K. Dick, and Suketu Mehta.


The anthology opens with the article “Literature as Crisis” written by Dr Richard Brown from the University of Leeds, UK. Other articles are authored by young scholars representing universities both in Poland and abroad.

Katarzyna Biela is a PhD candidate at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. She has been awarded a research grant for the project “B. S. Johnson i liberatura” [B. S. Johnson and liberature] in the competition “Diamentowy Grant” [Diamond Grant] organised by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. In her dissertation, she analyses B. S. Johnson’s prose and drama in the context of liberature—a literary genre encompassing works whose authors fuse content with form and treat the latter as a crucial tool to convey meanings (using font, page layout, volume structure, etc.). Her general interests concentrate around 20th- and 21st-century literature as well as multimodality.


Aleksandra Kamińska is a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of British Literature and Culture at the Institute of English Studies of the Jagiellonian University and an assistant lecturer in the Institute of Modern Languages at the Jesuit Academy Ignatianum in Kraków. She is a graduate of English Studies and Translation Studies and Intercultural Communication at the Jagiellonian University. Her main research interests are modern British drama and translation theory.


Alicja Lasak is a PhD student in the Jagiellonian University’s department of Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture at the Institute of English Studies. Her academic research focuses on contemporary British historical fiction. She has developed an avid interest in the novels by Ian McEwan, Rachel Seiffert, Helen Dunmore, Elizabeth Wein, John Boyne, and Simon Mawer, depicting World War II.


Kinga Latała is a PhD student in the Department of Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture at the Institute of English Studies, Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Her research interests include World War I and the interwar period in literature, focusing on the autobiographical writings of Siegfried Sassoon and Christopher Isherwood, as well as humour in the works of P. G. Wodehouse in the context of translation studies.


Sabina Sosin is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant in the Institute of English Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Her research interests focus on the experimental narratives from the second half of the 20th century, especially their physical and typographical realisation. She is currently working on her PhD dissertation in which she investigates the socio-cultural reasons behind the revival of the experimental fiction in the 21st century.