Derek Attridge

Derek Attridge was born in South Africa, where he first attended university, and some of his recent work is concerned with South African literature, including the Cambridge History of South African Literature (co-edited with David Attwell) and a study of the novels of J. M. Coetzee. He has a long-standing involvement in literary theory, and in particular the work of Jacques Derrida. Other theoretical works include The Singularity of Literature and The Work of Literature.

He has co-edited a book and published several papers on Zoë Wicomb, including a special journal edition. He is also well-known as a Joyce scholar, having published several works on this author and served for many years as a Trustee of the International James Joyce Foundation. His most recent book is Forms of Modernist Fiction: From James Joyce to Tom McCarthy. Another interest is poetry and poetic form, reflected in his 2019 book The Experience of Poetry: From Homer's Listeners to Shakespeare's Readers. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Camargo Foundation and the Leverhulme Trust, and is a Fellow of the British Academy.