Treatment of time and history in the narration of postmodern literature: Kurt Vonnegut’s slaughterhouse- five, Martin Amis’s time’s arrow and Tim O’Brien’s how to tell a true war story

Abstract

Postmodernism is considered as one of the broad terms in contemporary cultural domain. Literature is perhaps the most familiar aspect where postmodernism can be understood. The issue of time and history is a vital aspect in any literature. This paper has attempted to discuss postmodernism and the treatment of time and history in three postmodern literary works. The selected literary texts are Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow (1991) and Tim O’Brien’s How to Tell a True War Story (1990).