Preface: reading postmodern fiction -- Introduction: postmodernism and postmodernity -- Postmodern fiction: theory and practice -- Early postmodern fiction: Beckett, Borges, and Burroughs -- US metafiction: Coover, Barth, Nabokov, Vonnegut, Pynchon -- The postmodern historical novel: Fowles, Barnes, Swift -- Postmodern-postcolonial fiction -- Postmodern fiction by women: Carter, Atwood, Acker -- Two postmodern genres: cyberpunk and 'metaphysical' detective fiction -- Fiction of the 'postmodern condition': Ballard, DeLillo, Ellis.