1. Introduction: Towards Another Reading of 9/11 Neorealist Fiction

Aiming to map the role of literature among the apparatuses of cultural and social significance in the context of the events of September 11, 2001, and inspired by New Historicism/Cultural Materialism, Gheorghiu advocates a neorealist approach to 9/11 fiction. This introductory chapter considers the way in which the imprint of political and media discourses can be traced at the level of fiction. Also discussed is the reconfiguration of ideas and (re)constructed images of reality in the context of an unprecedented rise of alterity awareness, with the intention to demonstrate that the three types of discourse in the subtitle accentuate, purposely or not, the differences between the poles of the classical West–East dichotomy.