After the Unthinkable: How 9/11 Changed Fiction

IN THE days and weeks after 9/11 a number of writers asked what the future of fiction could be after such a rupture. The comments echoed philosopher Theodor Adorno’s comment: “Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”
 
Ten years on it is abundantly clear that fiction does, of course, have a future. Some novelists have tackled the events of that September day head on; others have used the episode as a spur to look at the Western world shaken out of its complacency. The quality of the output, as in all areas of fiction, is highly variable.