Hell in Contemporary Literature" discusses descent journeys in Holocaust testimony and fiction, memoirs of mental illness, and feminist, postmodern, and post-colonial narratives. A wide range of texts is discussed, including writing by Primo Levi, W. G. Sebald, Anne Michaels, and Salman Rushdie, and films such as Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now." Drawing on writings by Bakhtin, Levinas, Derrida, Judith Butler, and Paul Ricoeur, the book addresses issues such as narration and identity, the ethics of the subject, and trauma and memory.