This collection of essays by leading and emergent critics of twentieth-century fiction offers a wide-ranging and provocative reassessment of the British novel's achievements after modernism. Focusing on mid-century writing, the book identifies continuities of preoccupation - with national identity, historiography and the challenge to literary form presented by public and private violence--that span the entire century. The book offers new readings of such famous figures as Amis, Golding, Greene and Spark, and reappraises the work of brilliant but less familiar contemporaries including Ann Quin, Elizabeth Taylor and Storm Jameson.