Abstract: Since 2001, the American 9/11 novels that are focused on imagining and re-presenting the 9/11 terrorist attacks as the theme have appeared one after another. These novels seem to have delivered, in an ever-developing pattern, a sort of imaginary “narrative discourses” on this historical event. The first one mainly shows some relatively homogeneous features, such as the target, content, and mode of the discourse, but the second one dwells on some heterogeneous features, adopting a different perspective in observing the target, diversifying the content, and emphasizing the variation of the mode. Judging from the effect of the changes between the two “narrative discourses,” we may conclude that the initial “discourse,” which functions mostly as a way of witnessing, responds to the need for realistic narratives to document the traumatic crisis and condemn terrorism, whereas the second “discourse,” which relies on memory as the writing frame, puts extra emphasis on reflecting on the significance of “seeking common ground while shelving differences” in the post-9/11 literature.

Key words: American 9/11 novels, homogeneous witness, heterogeneous memory