The Bright Book of Life

The Bright Book of Life is America's most original and controversial literary critic's foray into the world of narrative fiction. Harold Bloom writes trenchantly about forty-eight masterworks spanning the Western tradition, from Don Quixote to Wuthering Heights to Invisible Man, in his first book devoted exclusively to narrative fiction.

In this valedictory volume, Yale professor Harold Bloom—who was regarded for more than half a century as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic—gives us his only book devoted entirely to the art of the novel. With his hallmark percipience, remarkable scholarship, and extraordinary devotion to sublimity, Bloom offers meditations on forty-eight essential works spanning the Western canon. These range from Don Quixote to Book of Numbers; from Wuthering Heights to Absalom, Absalom!; from Les Miserables to Blood Meridian; and from Vanity Fair to Invisible Man.

Here are trenchant appreciations of fiction by, among many others, Austen, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, James, Conrad, Lawrence, Le Guin, and Sebald.

Whether you have already read these books, plan to, or simply care about the importance and power of fiction, Harold Bloom is your unparalleled guide to understanding literature with new intimacy.