Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Language of Fiction: The Craft of Writing and the Pleasures of Reading

The Language of Fiction: The Craft of Writing and the Pleasures of Reading

Alter, Robert

Hardcover

Literary Criticism

Publisher Price: $21.95

PREORDER - Expected ship date January 5, 2027

ISBN10: 0674308379
ISBN13: 9780674308374
Publisher: Belknap Press
Published: Jan 5 2027
Pages: 160
Language: English

A master class in the language of fiction and a vivid reminder of how great novels can enrich our lives.

What distinguishes the prose of great novels? How have celebrated novelists shaped language into a lasting source of insight and aesthetic pleasure? In The Language of Fiction, Robert Alter--one of our most distinguished literary critics--explores the literary devices and techniques novelists have used to write fiction that is illuminating, surprising, and a delight to read.

Drawing on a lifetime of close reading, Alter guides readers through the writing of Jane Austen, Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Vladimir Nabokov, Saul Bellow, and more. With his characteristic clarity and sensitivity, Alter shows how these writers make use of word choice, metaphor, rhythm, perspective, and syntax in crafting the language of their novels. He carefully explains, for example, how James Joyce introduces invented words in Ulysses to represent the mind of a husband tormented by the thought of his wife's unfaithfulness, how Willa Cather uses figuration in her otherwise austere O Pioneers! to establish the felt world in which her story will unfold, and how Ann Patchett uses shifting perspectives in Bel Canto to explore the layered nature of language.

The Language of Fiction shows what true mastery of literary style looks like, something AI may imitate but cannot create. It offers not only a path to more attentive reading but a guide to writing itself, revealing how the prose of great writers can deepen our understanding, expand our inner lives, and inspire us to write with greater precision and power.

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