This is the first book to explore the profound impact of genetics on literary fiction over the past 40 years. It shows that major writers, including the Nobel laureates Doris Lessing and Kazuo Ishiguro, were compelled and disturbed by the gene-centric and reductionist account of human nature promoted by figures like E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins and tracks the ways in which they wrestled with its implications for humanist beliefs about agency and identity. It
goes on to argue that in contrast, the postgenomic view of organisms as agentic and interactive intersects productively with the humanist and posthumanist insights of contemporary fiction.