‘Generous, enjoyable and well informed.’ Observer<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
‘<\/i>500 expertly potted plots and personal comments on a wide range of pop and proper prose fiction.’ The Times<\/i><\/b>
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Ranging all the way from Aaron’s Rod<\/i> to Zuleika Dobson<\/i>, via The Devil Rides Out<\/i> and Middlemarch<\/i>, literary connoisseur and sleuth John Sutherland offers his very personal guide to the most rewarding, most remarkable and, on occasion, most shamelessly enjoyable works of fiction ever written.<\/p>\n
He brilliantly captures the flavour of each work and assesses its relative merits and demerits. He shows how it fits into a broader context and he offers endless snippets of intriguing information: did you know, for example, that the Nazis banned Bambi<\/i> or that William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying<\/i> on an upturned wheelbarrow; that Voltaire completed Candide<\/i> in three days, or that Anna Sewell was paid \u00c2\u00a320 for Black Beauty<\/i>? It is also effectively a history of the novel in 500 or so wittily informative, bite-sized pieces.<\/p>\n
Encyclopaedic and entertaining by turns, this is a wonderful dip-in book, whose opinions will inform and on occasion, no doubt, infuriate.
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‘<\/i>Anyone hooked on fiction should be warned: this book will feed your addiction.’ Mail on Sunday<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
‘A dazzling array of genres, periods, styles and tastes… chatty, insightful, unprejudiced (but not uncritical) and wise.’ Times Literary Supplement<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
John Sutherland, the critic and professor of literature, personally selects his favourite 500 novels, and provides witty and informed essays about them. They include ‘War & Peace’, ‘American Psycho’ and ‘Charlie & The Chocolate Factory’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[343],"product_tag":[358,4420,4465,955,349],"class_list":{"0":"post-95957","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","5":"product_cat-classics-plays-poetry","6":"product_tag-gift-books","7":"product_tag-literary-companions-book-reviews-guides","8":"product_tag-literary-reference-works","9":"product_tag-literature-history-criticism","10":"product_tag-social-cultural-history","11":"pa_book_author-sutherland-john","12":"pa_cover-paperback","13":"pa_dewey-011-73-edition23","14":"pa_imprint-penguin-books","15":"pa_language-english","16":"pa_pages-9234","17":"pa_publisher-penguin-books","18":"pa_readership-general-trade-code-k","20":"first","21":"onbackorder","22":"taxable","23":"shipping-taxable","24":"purchasable","25":"product-type-simple"},"yoast_head":"\n