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ABSTRACT
Edward Bond's The War Plays align with Theodor Adorno's characterization of utopia as the recognition of reality's dialectically gleaned potential for change. Formal and dramaturgical contradictions within The War Plays serve to stimulate social and political possibilities. Within this context, art functions as a form of "determinate negation," acting as a tool of resistance against ideological manipulations. As such, this study unveils how Bond's early confidence in the capacity of art to drive positive societal change evolves into a more nuanced position that recognizes both the enduring impact of cultural norms, and their tendency to recur throughout history. Any optimistic utopianism within Bond's The War Plays is therefore accompanied by the inescapable shadow of past conflicts.

Art in general and fiction in particular have had close affinities with politics throughout history. When there is a close tie between a narrative fiction and political issues then critics may deem it as "committed fiction". Political fiction is at the crossroads of political science and the art of fiction. And more often than not, novelists are involved with politics but not all of them are dubbed as or even consider themselves to be political novelists. In this article I attempt to investigate political fiction as a distinct genre produced (un)consciously by a range of (politically committed) novelists and critics. The authors discussed in this paper demonstrate dissimilar perspectives on freedom and democracy. Also, regarding political fiction and the responsibility of author, we will see how divergent is the attitudes of critics such as George Orwell, Allen Robbe-Grillet, Juan Goytisolo, Mario Vargas Llosa and Isabel Allende.