Stranger Than Fiction - Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel

AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 ''A masterclass in masterpieces'' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH ''Epic, personal, smart, wise, witty'' JOSHUA COHEN ''Sizzles with passion'' TOM McCARTHY For more than two decades, Edwin Frank has introduced readers to forgotten or overlooked texts as director of the acclaimed publisher New York Review Books. In Stranger than Fiction , he offers a legendary editor''s survey of the key works that defined the twentieth-century novel. Starting with Dostoevsky''s Notes from Underground , Frank shows how its twitchy, self-undermining narrator established a voice that would echo through the coming century. He illuminates Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway''s reinvention of the American sentence; Colette and Andre Gide''s subversions of traditional gender roles; and the monumental ambitions of works such as Mrs Dalloway , The Magic Mountain and The Man Without Qualities to encompass their times. Also included are Japan''s Natsume Soseki and Nigeria''s Chinua Achebe, as well as Vasily Grossman, Hans Erich Nossack and Elsa Morante. Later chapters range from Ralph Ellison and Marguerite Yourcenar to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and WG Sebald. Frank makes sense of the century by mixing biographical portraiture, cultural history and close encounters with great works of art. In so doing he renews our appreciation of the paradigmatic art form of our times.

Product details

• Authors: Edwin Frank, Frank Edwin
• Publisher: Vintage UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 21.11.2024
• EAN: 9781911717201
• ISBN: 978-1-911717-20-1
• No. of pages: 480
• Dimensions: 164 mm x 241 mm x 41 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Essays, feuilletons, literary criticism, interviews; Humanities, art, music > History; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Editors, Journalists, Publishers, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Historical, Prose: non-fiction, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, Literature: history & criticism, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Biography and non-fiction prose, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Biography: historical, political and military, Literature: history and criticism, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Cultural & Regional