This book shows how a political and cultural dynamic of amnesia and truth telling shapes literary constructions of history. Gauthier focuses on the works of Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison, Michelle Cliff, Bharati Mukherjee, and Julie Otsuka.

Contemporary Historical Fiction and a Politics of Truth 'The Downfall of the Empire and the Emergence of Detergents': Underhistory in Don DeLillo's Historical Novels The Other Side of Paradise:  Toni Morrison's (Un)Making of Mythic History A Politics of Truth and the Transnational Comm(unity) of Abolitionists: Michelle Cliff's Free Enterprise   Transnational Empire and its Exuberant (dis)Contents: Bharati Mukherjee's Holder of the World   Truth-Telling Fiction in a Post-9/11 World:  Don DeLillo's Falling Man and Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor Was Divine   Looking Back is Looking Forward: The Torture Debate and the Cultural Work of Truth-Telling Historical Fiction in the 21st Century