Around 1945 · Default Product

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Near the end of the Second World War, new ideas about citizenship, national identity, belonging, and rights emerged as the atrocities of the war - coupled with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - spurred writers and citizens around the world to think about their responsibilities to their fellow man. Covering British authors and contemporary fiction by migrant writers publishing at mid-century, as well as some photography from the era, Around 1945 is a collection of essays that reveals how literary texts and cultural events modeled human rights issues such as dignity, freedom, sovereignty, and responsibility. Unified by an investigation of the human and cultural aspects of universal rights, these essays show that British writers tested the parameters of citizenship and rights in novelistic form. By imagining duties and rights of citizens in hypothetical contexts, these novels expanded on the legislated entitlements and obligations that make up civic and human identity. To this day the repercussions of 1945 continue to unfold in stories about statehood, refugees, humanitarianism, displacement, and national belonging. At the same time, novels continue to imagine t

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