postwar fiction
Literature after armistice
Postwar fiction refers to literature written in the aftermath of a major war, most commonly World War II.
The term implies thematic engagement with war's consequences—trauma, disillusionment, reconstruction, moral reckoning—rather than merely the time period.
Postwar fiction grappled with the Holocaust and atomic bomb.
The label occasionally applies to fiction following World War I or other conflicts.
- European literatureWritten works from Europe
- modernismFavoring contemporary approaches
- traumaLasting psychological wound
- identity crisisLoss of personal certainty
- atomic ageEra of harnessed fission
Japanese literature · reconstruction · shell shock · alienation · American literature · magical realism · collective memory · never again · iron curtain · moral ambiguity · redemption arcs · resilience · Russian literature · memory · absurdism · human condition · existentialism · minimalism