"This is a book about the importance of fiction not alone as an aesthetic phenomenon but as a means of knowledge and discovery. The book argues that superior fiction is able to rise to levels of understanding-of worldly events, of human relationships, of human nature itself-unavailable to other disciplines or forms of learning. It goes on to argue that especially in our day, a time when so many various ideas are afloat, fiction is of the greatest significance. To make its argument the book considers many of the great novels of the western world; it also sets out the importance of fiction to many of the key intellectuals of the past century who were not themselves novelists or even literary men or women. It also discusses the fate of fiction in the current day"--
