Book excerpt: The Fiction of Postmodernity is a significant and accessible study of the relation of postmodern fiction to theories of the postmodern. Contemporary works of fiction by novelists such as Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Thomas Pynchon, and Martin Amis are viewed in relation to critiques of the "culture industry," analyses of the "postmodern condition," and theories of simulacra. The work of influential theorists of the postmodern--such as Theodor Adorno, Jean-François Lyotard, Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard--is explained and compared. The book offers descriptions of the postmodern from both the Marxist critical tradition and from the perspective of postmarxism. Key features in both these definitions are explained in relation to modernist and postmodern works of fiction. Issues relating to the postmodern representation of history and the development of a postmodern politics are also addressed in relation to works of contemporary fiction.