Reading the classics should be a joy, not a duty

Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel Edwin Frank

Fern Press, pp.480, 25

Writing the history of the novel, even covering a limited period, is a challenge. No one could possibly read every novel that has been published. Even if you read 100 a year you would scarcely scratch the surface. It isn’t like writing a history of most other subjects, where the important matters select themselves.

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Taggedbestsellers, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Literary criticism, Mrs Dalloway, Natsume Soseki, Proust, The Magic Mountain, Ulysses, Vassily Grossman

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Reading the classics should be a joy, not a duty

Edwin Frank’s survey of 20th-century fiction stresses the po-faced seriousness of the great novel. But many masterpieces revel in the ridiculous – or are about nothing at all

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