"Shaw's study underlines the importance of cultural production as intervention as well as education when negotiating complex structures such as the global financial system . [It] spotlights a wide variety of issues and interpretations." -- Anglistik "In a brilliant and perceptive analysis, Shaw shows how, when crisis hit, novelists and dramatists understood quicker and better than economists the true depths of it, and its challenge to the way we tell our own stories." -- Paul Mason, Economics Editor, Channel 4 News "Crunch Lit is a significant, wide-ranging and energetic book that makes clear the literary responses to the global economic catastrophe which has devastated so many. Lucidly written, it establishes a genre and its context and, a model of literary criticism, it explores the meaning of the 'credit crunch'. It should be read by everyone teaching or researching contemporary literature, and probably by everyone working in finance, too." -- Robert Eaglestone, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK "Comprehensive, thorough and insightful. With impressive economy of style, Crunch Lit defines this emerging genre, and considers the impact of financialisation on our thought and culture.

A valuable book for anyone interested in the social novel in the twenty-first century." -- Richard Benson, author of The Valley.