Philip Hensher

Reading the classics should be a joy, not a duty

Edwin Frank’s survey of 20th-century fiction stresses the po-faced seriousness of the great novel. But many masterpieces revel in the ridiculous – or are about nothing at all

Pearl S. Buck, author of the prize-winning epic The Good Earth, now the property of bored specialists at best. [Getty Images]
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  • Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel

    Edwin Frank

    Fern Press, pp. 480, £25

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