Unnatural narratives, Brexit and ideology in Ian McEwan’sThe Cockroach

Abstract

Against the backdrop of sudden shifts in global political and historical climate, our century has witnessed a convergence of turns in humanities, including the nonhuman turn and the historical turn. Ian McEwan’s latest novella, The Cockroach, is a just work along this line. Through the use of unnatural narratives within realistic context, McEwan presents readers with a world that is both strange and recognisable. By examining the unnatural narrative strategies, including the deployment of nonhuman character and omniscient narrator, McEwan expresses concerns for the future of humanity and fear for social and cultural parochialism, populism and anti-cosmopolitanism.