The Art Of Fiction
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
What separates a great novel from a merely good one? In The Art of Fiction, celebrated novelist and critic David Lodge dismantles the craft of literary storytelling with the precision of a master craftsman, guiding readers through fifty fundamental narrative techniques — from the opening sentence to the use of the unreliable narrator — drawing on a rich canon of examples spanning Austen, Flaubert, Kafka, and beyond. Originally commissioned as a column for The Independent on Sunday, each chapter presents a single literary device, illustrated with sharp, illuminating extracts from both classic and contemporary fiction, making the complex mechanics of storytelling startlingly accessible. Lodge writes with the dual authority of a practising novelist and a distinguished academic, producing a work that is at once a practical handbook for aspiring writers and a deeply pleasurable read for anyone who loves literature. His prose is lucid, witty, and never dry — he argues persuasively that understanding *how* fiction works only deepens the reader's appreciation of *why* it moves us. The Art of Fiction stands as an indispensable companion to the novel as a form, and closes with a question that lingers long after the final page: if you now know every trick of the trade, what does that do to the magic?
Author: David Lodge
Format: Paperback
Genre: Literary theory
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
What separates a great novel from a merely good one? In The Art of Fiction, celebrated novelist and critic David Lodge dismantles the craft of literary storytelling with the precision of a master craftsman, guiding readers through fifty fundamental narrative techniques — from the opening sentence to the use of the unreliable narrator — drawing on a rich canon of examples spanning Austen, Flaubert, Kafka, and beyond. Originally commissioned as a column for The Independent on Sunday, each chapter presents a single literary device, illustrated with sharp, illuminating extracts from both classic and contemporary fiction, making the complex mechanics of storytelling startlingly accessible. Lodge writes with the dual authority of a practising novelist and a distinguished academic, producing a work that is at once a practical handbook for aspiring writers and a deeply pleasurable read for anyone who loves literature. His prose is lucid, witty, and never dry — he argues persuasively that understanding *how* fiction works only deepens the reader's appreciation of *why* it moves us. The Art of Fiction stands as an indispensable companion to the novel as a form, and closes with a question that lingers long after the final page: if you now know every trick of the trade, what does that do to the magic?