The Blind Spot. An Essay on the Novel

Starting with Don Quixote and his own experience as a writer, Javier Cercas launches into a consideration of the most compelling fiction of the last hundred years, from Kafka, Borges, Perec, Calvino and Kundera, to Sebald, Coetzee, Foster 'Wallace and Knausgaard. He celebrates certain aspects of the novel in the twenty-first century: its essential irony and ambiguity, its commitment to innovation, its omnivorous desire to cram the whole world within its pages, and its intricate concern with fiction and reality. Then he moves on to consider the actual meaning of the novel, the uncertain and discredited role of the writer as intellectual, and the role of the reader in the creation of a form whose aim is to tell the truth by telling lies. Always lively and provocative, Cercas provides a fresh interpretation of novels from Cervantes and Melville to the present, and an essential key to understanding narrative in our time.