Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel.

In "Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel," Edwin Frank explores the works of influential novelists such as Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, and Ralph Ellison. Frank argues that these authors used their writings to reflect historical, philosophical, and social changes rather than to make sense of them. He highlights how Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novella "Notes from the Underground" laid the foundation for 20th-century literature by embracing psychological realism. While Frank's analysis focuses on European-language books before 1960, his erudite approach sheds light on various thematic and aesthetic connections within the 20th-century novel. [Extracted from the article]

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