Novel

Encyclopedic in scope and heroically audacious <i>The Novel: An Alternative History</i> is the first attempt in over a century to tell the complete story of our most popular literary form. Contrary to conventional wisdom the novel did not originate in 18th-century England nor even with <i>Don Quixote</i> but is coeval with civilization itself. After a pugnacious introduction in which Moore defends innovative demanding novelists against their conservative critics the book relaxes into a world tour of the pre-modern novel beginning in ancient Egypt and ending in 16th-century China with many exotic ports-of-call: Greek romances; Roman satires; medieval Sanskrit novels narrated by parrots; Byzantine erotic thrillers; 5000-page Arabian adventure novels; Icelandic sagas; delicate Persian novels in verse; Japanese war stories; even Mayan graphic novels. Throughout Moore celebrates the innovators in fiction tracing a continuum between these pre-modern experimentalists and their postmodern progeny.