"Politics and the Novel in a Post-Brexit World: Ali Smith’s Autumn"

: Hailed as the first great Brexit novel (Lyall, 2017), Ali Smith’s Autumn (2016) has been warmly welcomed by critics as a subtle analysis of the fractured national and personal identities in contemporary Britain. By repeatedly acknowledging the wounds inflicted on the British body politic by the divisive 2016 referendum, the novel yields readily to the new subgenre. As politics in the novel inevitably provokes criticism from the other side of the political spectrum, it comes as no surprise that Autumn is read as an overtly intellectual middle class response to Brexit crisis, from those interested in the mindsets of Leavers and of the less visible Remainer segments of British society. Starting with the slipperiness of the terms “political novel” and “Brexit novel”, this paper discusses the ways in which Autumn addresses the complex inscrutable present alongside ghosts from the past. It examines the novel’s representation of Brexit’s divisive effect, and relates it to the inherent subversiveness of the novel as a genre. Finally, the paper identifies Smith’s ultimate political statement in her celebration of the transforming power of language.