Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel

One of the Washington Post’s 50 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 | A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice | A Boston Globe Best Book of 2024

“Ambitious, intelligent, and happily unpretentious.” —Louis Menand, The New Yorker

“Convincing, idiosyncratic and often felicitous.” —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review

A legendary editor’s reckoning with the twentieth-century novel and the urgent messages it sends.

“How can we live differently?” a young woman urgently demands in Virginia ...