The bright book of life : novels to read and reread / Harold Bloom

"This is a Borzoi Book published by Alfred A. Knopf"--Title page verso

Yale professor Harold Bloom--who for more than half a century was regarded as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic--gives us his only book devoted entirely to the art of the novel. With his hallmark percipience, remarkable scholarship, and extraordinary devotion to sublimity, Bloom offers meditations on forty-eight essential works spanning the Western canon, from "Don Quivote" to "Book of numbers"; from "Wuthering Heights" to "Absalom, Absalom!"; from "Les Misřables" to "Blood meridian"; from "Vanity fair" to "Invisible man". Here are trenchant appreciations of fiction by, among many others, Austen, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, James, Conrad, Lawrence, Le Guin, and Sebald. Whether you have already read these books, plan to, or simply care about the importance and power of fiction, Harold Bloom is your unparalleled guide to understanding novels with new intimacy