An in-depth study of contemporary novels through the lens of affect theory and ideology critique.  Affective Crisis and the Possibility of Attachment offers a comparative critical study of contemporary fiction. It intervenes in discussions about contemporary fiction in its literary-historical relationship to postmodernism and in its socio-historical relationship to neoliberalism, arguing that contemporary literature is dominated by affective questions that are rooted in neoliberalism. Whereas previous research focused on either a literary-historical or a socio-historical approach, this study examines eighteen novels from various parts of the world in both their diachronic relation to postmodernism and in their synchronic relation to neoliberal society.