Another recurring note, Frank finds, is the 20th century novel’s desire to, as H.G. Wells put it, “get the frame into the picture” and thus explore its own artificiality.

Book Review. Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel. By Edwin Frank Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 480 pages, $33 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a ...

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. Sasseen’s list of unearthed gems focuses on 20th-century titles—her newest pick ...

According to Frank, Dostoevsky’s sour, utterly disenchanted, self-disgusted monologue, is the first 20th-century novel, avant la lettre. This “unclassifiable” work is “written and rewritten time and ...