What is narrative? Ridvan Askin brings together aesthetics, contemporary North American fiction, Gilles Deleuze, narrative theory and the recent speculative turn to answer this question. Through this process, he develops a transcendental empiricist concept of narrative. Askin argues against the established consensus of narrative theory for an understanding of narrative as fundamentally nonhuman, unconscious and expressive. Close readings include: Ana Castillo, The Mixquiahuala Letters (1986)

Michael Ondaatje, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970)

Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist (1999)

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (2000).