The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts

The articles with which David Lodge entertained and delighted readers of the Independent on Sunday and The Washington Post are now revised, expanded, and collected together in book form. The art of fiction is considered under a wide range of headings, such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Time-shift, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and each topic is illustrated by a passage or two taken from classic or modern fiction. Drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James and Martin Amis, Jane Austen and Fay Weldon and Henry Fielding and James Joyce, David Lodge makes accesible to the general reader the richness and variety of British and American fiction. Technical terms, such as Interior Monologue, Metafiction, Intertextuality and the Unreliable Narrator, are lucidly explained and their applications demonstrated.Bringing to criticism the verve and humour of his own novels, David Lodge has provided essential reading for students of literature, aspiring writers, and anyone who wishes to understand how literature works.'Here is scholarship made human...There has been no better populist study of fiction since Forster's Aspects of the Novel' - Nigel Andrews in the Financial Times'Agreeable and highly instructive...a real treat" - David Robson in the Sunday Telegraph'His texts are useful, unpretentious, accessible...The Art of Fiction is a book for dipping, a book for starting up trains of thought or discussion' - A.S. Byatt in the Sunday Times