Kermode assesses the revolutionary transformations in literary criticism over the last fifteen years and places them in historical perspective. Examining novels ranging in scope from a 1907 bestseller to the avant-garde works of various periods, he includes such writers as Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Michel Butor, and Thomas Pynchon.

Frank Kermode is Julian Clarence Levi Professor of English Literature, Columbia University, and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.

Read More by Frank Kermode:

• The Classic: Literary Images of Permanence and Change
• The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative
• The Literary Guide to the Bible
• An Appetite for Poetry
• The Uses of Error