<b><b><b>America's most original and controversial literary critic writes trenchantly about forty-eight masterworks spanning the Western tradition—from <i>Don Quixote</i> to <i>Wuthering Heights</i> to <i>Invisible Man</i>—in his first book devoted exclusively to narrative fiction.</b></b></b><br><br>In this valedictory volume, 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 <i>Don Quixote</i> to <i>Book of Numbers</i>; from <i>Wuthering Heights</i> to <i>Absalom, Absalom!</i>; from <i>Les Misérables</i> to <i>Blood Meridian</i>; from <i>Vanity Fair</i> to <i>Invisible Man</i>. Here are trenchant appreciations of fiction by, among many others, Austen, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, James, Conrad, Lawrence, Le Guin, and Sebald.<br> <br>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 literature with new intimacy.