AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024A masterclass in masterpieces SUNDAY TELEGRAPHEpic personal smart wise witty JOSHUA COHENSizzles with passion TOM McCARTHYFor more than two decades Edwin Frank has introduced readers to forgotten or overlooked texts as director of the acclaimed publisher New York Review Books. In Stranger than Fiction he offers a legendary editors survey of the key works that defined the twentiethcentury novel.Starting with Dostoevskys Notes from Underground Frank shows how its twitchy selfundermining narrator established a voice that would echo through the coming century. He illuminates Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingways reinvention of the American sentence Colette and Andr Gides subversions of traditional gender roles and the monumental ambitions of works such as Mrs Dalloway The Magic Mountain and The Man Without Qualities to encompass their times.