John Limon is John Hawley Roberts Professor of English at Williams College, USA. He is the author of The Place of Fiction in the Time of Science (1990), Writing After War (1994), Stand-Up Comedy in Theory (2000), and Death's Following (2012).

Introduction
Part I: Escape, Escapism, Escapology
1. Notes from Neverland
2. I Flit, I Float, I Fleetly Flee, I Fly [on The Sound of Music]
Part II: Family Likenesses
3. The Escapist [on Michael Chabon]
4. Mellon [on Junot Diaz]
5. Bath and Bathos [on Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer]
6. The Beauty! The Horror! [on Emma Donoghue]
7. Et in Nobis Arcadia [on Lauren Groff]
8. The Ethics of Immortality [on Colson Whitehead]
9. The Songs of Murdered Souls [On Jesmyn Ward and George Saunders]
Part III: Foreign Correspondents
10. Choice and the Chosen [on David Grossman]
11. Categorical Denial [on Arundhati Roy]
Part IV: Prequel
12. The Tunnel Out [on William H. Gass]

Acknowledgments
References
Index