How Fiction Works

Resumen del libro

In the tradition of E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, How Fiction Works is a scintillating and searching study of the main elements of fiction, such as narrative, detail, characterization, dialogue, realism, and style. In his first full-length book of criticism, one of the most prominent critics of our time takes the machinery of story-telling apart to ask a series of fundamental questions: What do we mean when we say we know' a fictional character? What constitutes a telling' detail? When is a metaphor successful? Is realism realistic? Why do most endings of novels disappoint?

Wood ranges widely, from Homer to Beatrix Potter, from the Bible to John Le Carré, and his book is both a study of the techniques of fiction-making and an alternative history of the novel. Playful and profound, it incisively sums up two decades of bold, often controversial, and now classic critical work, and will be enlightening to writers, readers, and anyone interested in what happens on the page.

Biografía del autor

James Wood (Durham, 1965) es crítico literario y escritor de diversos ensayos y novelas. Es también profesor de Crítica Literaria en la Universidad de Harvard y colaborador de The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books y la London Review of Books. Considerado uno de los personajes más influyentes de las letras estadounidenses, es autor, entre otras obras, de The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief, The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel y The Fun Stuff.