Introduction Automatons and the Atomic Abyss Haunting and Race The Sacred Other The Dubious Double The Familiar Made Strange   Repression and Confession Conclusion

This study of fiction produced in America in the decade following 1945 examines literature by writers such as Kerouac and Bellow. It examines how, though such fiction seemed to resolutely avoid the events and implications of World War II, it was still suffused with dread and suggestions of war in imagery and language.

ERIN MERCER is Teaching Fellow in the School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.