How Fiction Works is a scintillating and searching study of the main elements of fiction, such as narrative, detail, characterisation, dialogue, realism and style. In his first full-length book of criticism, one of the most prominent critics of our time takes the machinery of story-telling apart to ask a series of fundamental questions : What do we mean when we say we 'know' a character ? What constitutes a 'telling' detail ? When is a metaphor successful ? Why do most endings of novels disappoint ?

With examples ranging from Homer to Beatrix Potter, and the Bible to John le Carré, the result is both a study of the techniques of fiction-making and an alternative history of the novel. Playful and profound, it will be enlightening to writers, readers and anyone interested in what happens on the page.