A Hauntological-Communitarian Approach to the Work of Anna Burns is the first critical study of Anna Burns' fiction, establishing her as one of the most significant writers of our time, especially within the context of contemporary Irish literature. Read through the lens of a combination of post-phenomenological communitarian theories and Derridean hauntology, this book provides detailed close readings of Burns' works of fiction, paying close attention to what is left unsaid, and that which speaks form the margins. The book explores both the ways in which Burns's fiction interacts with abstract notions of community, secrecy, immunity and identity, whilst at the same time underscoring how it may speak more specifically to our current times - times partially defined in Northern Ireland by social and political unrest, suspended parliaments, invisible sea-borders, revelations of institutional violence, and the cyclical return of transgenerational trauma. The book investigates how Burns' use of humour may provide something of a way out of the self-destructive grip that the trauma narrative seems to maintain on individuals, communities and nations alike. The book appeals to postgraduate students and academics in the field of English Literature, Irish Studies and Cultural Studies.

Felicity Jane Octavia Smith is a doctor of Languages, Texts and Contexts from the University of Granada, Spain, where she is one of the founding members of the EFACIS Granada Irish Studies Circle. She is currently collaborating with the state-funded research project Poetics and Politics of Transparency in Contemporary Literature in English, and works as part of the editorial team for the journal Theory Now: Journal of Literature, Critique, and Thought. She is an active member of the Spanish Association for Irish Studies (AEDEI) and the European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies (EFACIS), and works as the Membership Secretary for the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL).