The Novel Beginnings to 1600

The Novel: An Alternative History is a breathtaking achievement. Steve Moore isn't just incredibly well read, he's also funny, irreverent, argumentative and sometimes even downright mean. There's nothing dryly academic about his magnificent book--it's as personal as a love affair and just as thrilling. Like Edmund Wilson, Hugh Kenner or Randall Jarrell, Moore writes with real stylish dash, yet backs up what he says with the authority that only comes from vast knowledge. Ancient Greek novels, classics of Asian fiction, medieval romances, Renaissance allegories, Victorian triple-deckers, postmodern experiments--Moore knows them all. For readers, the result isn't just a history of the novel, it's also one of the all-time great literary carnival rides. Michael Dirda, author of Classics for Pleasure and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism

"Steven Moore's recent encyclopedic study, The Novel: An Alternative History...dramatically amplifies our understanding of what the novel can and cannot do, and highlights living currents that sprang into existence 40 centuries ago and continue to flow into the contemporary novel." (Stephen Burn, The New York Times Book Review)"