Real Nature

The work of contemporary British writer, Sarah Hall, maintains consistent focus on humans as embedded within a global ecology. This chapter - a contribution to the first book-length work of criticism on Hall - argues that Hall is part of a new generation of writers whose work marks a point of departure from the literary postmodernism of the late 20th century, and which turns instead towards such discourses as materialism and deep-ecology in order to articulate a profound shift in consciousness, a shift caused by the impact of ecological degradation which has been so apparent through the course of the last forty years.