The Art of Fiction

"Exciting...a book for starting up trains of thought or discussion... It did make me think, as a writer, as a reader, as a teacher" -- AS Byatt Sunday Times "Here is scholarship made human... There has been no better populist study of fiction since Forster's Aspects of the Novel" Financial Times "It is wonderful to be clued in to some of the magic tricks of the trade; the point of view, the stream of consciousness, the use of names, the sense of place, time-shift and intertextuality" Los Angeles Times "Lodge has the knack of wearing his scholarship lightly... One finds here precisely that expansive, humane wisdom which is so sorely lacking in much narrow-minded modern criticism... He gets to the bottom of things, telling us why we read fiction...admirers will find in The Art of Fiction concentrated essence of Lodge" Guardian "These essays are as fresh and as readable as ever" -- David Evans Independent