Contemporary American and Canadian border fiction

Scientific Essay from the year 2018 in the subject American Studies - Literature, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Anglistik), language: English, abstract: The traditional literary coverage of border and frontier in American and Canadian literature has always been closely linked to war, survival, trauma, trauma time, immigration as well as exile and has re-gained interest of many contemporary writers and critics after 9/11.

Since that date both terms have been discussed on a collective, national or individual level thus throwing light on the manifold consequences of this new interpretation of the complex term border which is of special interest here.

The literary dealing with border and its consequences in El Akkad's novel American War (2017) must yet be seen in a close relationship between border and war. The incorporation of war into English speaking literature itself has a long tradition since wars as such form ideal literary backgrounds for plot, character development or political criticism. In times of civil uproar, political insecurity, outer enemies or ongoing wars this incorporation of war as a literary means has always been present. This is recently perhaps best shown by the events of 9/11. They have not only taken American literature out from its long involvement in local matters such as family, village or town but pushed it into new directions which formed completely new types of novels such as the 9/11 Novel, the post-9/11 Novel or Ground Zero Fiction where war gained a new dimension which is so different from war literature of the First World War, the Second World War or the Vietnam War.
In many cases this literary coverage of 9/11 has mostly remained in American families or matters and it lacked an appropriate coverage of foreign perspectives.

EI Akkad's novel American War (2017) exactly fits into this background not only because it is written by an author originating from a Muslim background it also brings the topic war back to America to discuss it here. This is new and radical in the sense that readers suddenly are confronted with problems such as war, terrorism, suicide bombers or chemical warfare which so far have been placed on foreign battlegrounds.
El Akkad combines two main trends of Muslim writing which are characterized by bringing the narration into the West or by taking it back into the former colonies. By choosing a civil war as the setting for his novel he mixes both trends while importing terror back to the USA which is to blame for it.