Kivy raises questions of a philosophical nature about the novel that will be of interest both to the professional philosopher and to the general reader.

Peter Kivy is Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, at Rutgers University. He is the author of numerous books and articles on aesthetics and philosophy of art, including De Gustibus: Arguing About Taste and Why We Do It (OUP, 2015), Music Alone: Philosophical Reflections on the Purely Musical Experience (Cornell UP, 2009), The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics (2004) and Antithetical Arts: On the Ancient Quarrel Between Literature and Music (OUP, 2009). Several of his books have been translated into Chinese, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. He is a former Guggenheim Fellow and a past President of the American Society for Aesthetics.

Preface / 1. The Actual, the Possible and the Probable: Problems in Poetics IX / 2. Criticism, Communication, Conversation, Craft / 3. Facts From Fictions / 4. Knowledge and Novel Knowledge / 5. Swept Up in the Story / 6. Tell Me a Story! / 7. The Dancer and the Dance: On Reading as Performance / 8. Joking Morality / Bibliography / Index