Epilogue

Between the pronounced end of books at the end of the twentieth century and the current rise of generative AI, print-based literature has witnessed significant transformations heralded by the digital age, COVID-19, and increased media cross-fertilization. As the first quarter of the twenty-first century is drawing to a close, literary texts are positioned amid an expanding landscape of storytelling practices and devices, ranging from audiobooks and podcasts to mobile applications and digital storytelling platforms. Multimodal fiction has emerged in this historical context, opening fresh pathways for conceptualizing narrative content and re-defining the literary affordances of the print book medium.