This book explores for the first time the literature of absolute war in connection to World War II. From a transnational and comparative standpoint, it addresses a set of theoretical, historical, and literary questions, shedding new light on the nature of absolute war, the literature on the world war of 1939–45, and modern war writing in general. It determines the main features of the language of absolute war, and how it gravitates around fundamental semantic clusters, such as the horror, terror, and the specter. The Literature of Absolute War studies the variegated responses given by literary authors to the extreme and seemingly unsolvable challenges posed by absolute war to epistemology, ethics, and language. It also delves into the different poetics that articulate the writing on absolute war, placing special emphasis on four literary practices: traditional realism, traumatic realism, the fantastic, and catastrophic modernism.

‘The Literature of Absolute War is an original and ambitious work that tells us a great deal about the extent to which writing in the wake of war changes the way we see the world … Santiáñez has formalised an approach to the literature of the Second World War that should prove a cornerstone of future research.’

Kieran J. H. Shackleton Source: Textual Practice

‘Santiáñez-Tió (St. Louis Univ.) offers a dense, informed, and informative book packed with analyses of texts ... Required reading for advanced scholars but accessible to nonspecialists ... Recommended.’

K. Tölölyan Source: Choice Magazine

‘… an impressive academic feat … the breadth and scope of the book itself seem appropriate, given the immensity of the event itself as well as the wide array of literary responses to it and the overall lack of academic studies focused on the literature of the Second World War … It is a book and study without which any study of the literatures of the twentieth century and more precisely of the history and literatures of war would be woefully incomplete.’

Ron Ben-Tovim Source: Poetics Today