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Episode details

Radio 3,21 Feb 2011,15 mins

SeriesThe Life Cycle of a Fictional Character - An Alternative History of the Novel

The World

The Essay

Available for over a year

Critic James Wood explores aspects of novelistic technique through a fictional character. A young man or woman walks along the street of a modern city. There are all kinds of sensations, apprehensions, and calculations. Buildings, cars, people - the entirety of modern life, at speed - rush at us, and rush past us. Exactly what does this person hear and see and feel, and how is this represented in the modern novel?

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