In the Gotham Library because…

On October 26, 2023 we held a Gotham Book Event conversation with experts on the form Jonathan Leaf and Andrew Stuttaford to celebrate Epstein’s new book and tout his persuasive argument.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

In this brief but highly engaging book, Joseph Epstein argues for the primacy of fiction, and specifically of the novel, among all intellectual endeavors that seek to describe the behavior of human beings. Reading superior fiction, he holds, arouses the mind in a way that nothing else quite does. He shows how the novel at its best operates above the level of ideas in favor of taking up the truths of the heart. No other form probes so deeply into that eternal mystery of mysteries, human nature, than does the novel.