The Novel; A Biography: Michael Schmidt and Michael Wood

A novel that we don't talk about is a novel that we haven't finished.

Quoting from the letters, diaries, reviews, and essays of novelists and drawing on their biographies, Schmidt’s The Novel – A Biography (Harvard) invites us into the creative dialogues between authors and between books, and suggests how these dialogues have shaped the development of the novel in English.

Michael Schmidt spoke with Michael Wood, author and regular contributor to the London Review of Books, in a conversation chaired by novelist Kirsty Gunn. The discussion covered the 13-year process of writing the book, the social function of the novel, an appalling misprint involving Martin Amis and favourite reads old and new.