The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes [Paperback]

Fiction imagines for us a stopping point from which life can be seen as intelligible, asserts Joan Silber inThe Art of Time in Fiction. The end point of a story determines its meaning, and one of the main tasks a writer faces is to define the duration of a plot. Silber uses wide-ranging examples from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chinua Achebe, and Arundhati Roy, among others, to illustrate five key ways in which time unfolds in fiction. In clear-eyed prose, Silber elucidates a tricky but vital aspect of the art of fiction.

Joan Silberis the author of six books of fiction, includingThe Size of the World. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York City.