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Episode details

Radio 3,25 Feb 2011,15 mins

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

Death

The Essay

Available for over a year

Critic James Wood explores aspects of novelistic technique through a fictional character. We have talked a lot about life, and its crucial nutrients - thought, talk, sensation, knowing others, our sense of self. How does the novel deal with the end of life, and the absence of all this? Presenter James Wood was the tyro lead fiction reviewer on the Guardian for several years. He now is a professor at Harvard.

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