This chapter focuses on punk as a subcultural phenomenon that has provided a key touchstone for a number of literary texts. The chapter addresses two main areas: first, how punk fiction has tried to match the formal and stylistic practices that have characterized punk in other aesthetic and cultural fields, such as music and fashion; and second, how it forms a backdrop for selected novels to explore broader social and political contexts, both in the 1970s and in subsequent decades. It examines narrative techniques and thematic concerns in a range of novels from the period, including Gideon Sams’s The Punk (1977), Richard Allen’s Punk Rock (1977), and two later texts where punk forms a significant backdrop to characterization and plot development: Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia (1991) and Jonathan Coe’s The Rotters’ Club (2001). It goes on to discuss the diversity of punk influence with a focus in particular on the ‘Muslim punk’ novel The Taqwacores (2003) by Michael Muhammad Knight and Kathy Acker’s experiment with form in Blood and Guts in High School (1984), which mirrors some of the radical aspects of punk attitude and aesthetics.