This introduction summarizes the scope of the book and places the research in the fields of post-war and contemporary literature studies and its contribution to subcultural studies. It identifies four main aims of the book: to offer critical analysis of a range of novels produced during the period from 1950 to the second decade of the twenty-first century; to explore how a critical approach that borrows from important concepts and models in subcultural studies can inform the analysis of literary texts; to offer a distinct contribution to subcultural studies in showing how literary fiction can provide an important articulation of youth cultural participation that dovetails with approaches grounded in other disciplines such as sociology, criminology, history, and cultural studies; to produce a commentary on how fiction about youth subcultures represents an important aspect of cultural politics alongside, and intersectionally aligned with, other categories such as class, race, gender and sexuality.