A collection of articles which appeared in The Independent on Sunday for 50 weeks between 1991 and 1992. The art of fiction is considered under a wide range of headings, such as the intrusive author, suspense, the epistolary novel, time-shift, magic realism and symbolism and each topic is illustrated by a passage or two taken from classic or modern fiction. Drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James and Martin Amis, Jane Austin and Fay Weldon, Henry Fielding and James Joyce, David Lodge makes accessible to the general reader the richness and variety of British and American fiction. Technical terms, such as interior monologue, metafiction, intertextuality and the unreliable narrator are explained and the application demonstrated.