This book is a study of “complicity” as a defining theme in post-World War II liberal U.S. fiction between 1945 and 1970.  The authors discussed in-depth include James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Mary McCarthy, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, Kurt Vonnegut, and Richard Wright.  All were prominent and distinguished writers, whose books sold well and whose opinions on current affairs appeared regularly in major newspapers and magazines.  Each had at least one book that had become iconic for its critical assessment of some aspect of U.S. society. Norman, reader in U.S. literature at the University of Kent and author of Read more