The course looks comparatively at a range of political fictions from different places and periods, at the ways in which they have been written and read, and at some of the central concerns they might be seen to articulate. Issues of representation will be addressed as well as some of the frames within which such fictions might be read, including some Marxist, feminist, race-centred, psychoanalytic and other approaches. We will discuss some of the genres and modes through which political fiction presents itself, and consider how politics, political struggles and historical upheavals can be (most effectively) represented in fiction.