Contemporary fiction has never been less contemporary. Midcentury writers tended to set their works in their own moment, but for the last several decades critical acclaim and attention have fixated on historical fiction. This shift is particularly dramatic for writers of color. Even as the literary canon has become more diverse, cultural institutions have celebrated Black, Asian American, Latinx, and Indigenous novelists almost exclusively for their historical fiction.

Writing Backwards explores what the dominance of historical fiction in the contemporary canon reveals about American literary culture. Alexander Manshel investigates the most celebrated historical genres—contemporary narratives of slavery, the World War II novel, the multigenerational family saga, immigrant fiction, and the novel of recent history—alongside the literary and academic institutions that have elevated them. He examines novels by writers including Toni Morrison, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Colson Whitehead, Julia Alvarez, Leslie Marmon Silko, Michael Chabon, Julie Otsuka, Yaa Gyasi, Ben Lerner, and Tommy Orange in the context of MFA programs, literary prizes, university syllabi, book clubs, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Manshel studies how historical fiction has evolved over the last half century, documenting the formation of the newly inclusive literary canon as well as who and what it still excludes. Offering new insight into how institutions shape literature and the limits of historical memory, Writing Backwards also considers recent challenges to the historical turn in American fiction.

"[Writing Backwards] make[s] major contributions to a post-McGurl sociology of literature . . . Manshel’s argument that historical fiction has achieved a new prestige in American literary culture over the course of the last four decades is ultimately convincing." - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"A fascinating new book . . . Manshel's research exposes the inertia and unspoken rules that shape literary institutions." - Boston Globe

"One of the year’s most trenchant . . . literary studies." - Wall Street Journal

"The trend Manshel observes is very real. Once you see how pervasive traumatic, historical fiction has become, you cannot unsee it. Writing Backwards also convinced me that the overlapping aims of universities, prize committees and cultural institutions have produced this trend. But Manshel’s book raises broader questions: What is the so-called literary canon supposed to do? What has it done in the past? And does the canon matter in an era when literary education is crowded out by technical training and online distraction?" - Times Literary Supplement

"Manshel persuasively argues that the default assumption that nonwhite writers ought to write historical fiction has created imbalances in literary culture." - Los Angeles Review of Books

"Helping to make sense of [the] profusion [of historical fiction] is Manshel’s excellent Writing Backwards, a wide-ranging study of the recent historical novel." - The Drift

"This volume offers food for thought for novelists, critics, and historians alike. Recommended." - Choice Reviews

"With his forest-and-trees account of this phenomenon, Manshel has produced an indispensable retelling of recent American literary history. And against the backdrop of today’s culture wars, Writing Backwards offers an urgent case study of the centrality of race in American historical memory." - Studies in the Novel