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Author: Okotie, Simon

Literary essays

Published on 20 February 2025 by Melville House UK in the United Kingdom as part of ‘the FUTURES’ series.

Paperback | 144 pages
178 x 111 | 0g

We’re used to the novel beingdeclared dead, dying, or endangered. Seemingly every few years, a critic willread it the last rites – yet the form remains more popular than ever withreaders. In The Future of the Novel, author Simon Okotie presents a boldfuture for long-form fiction, and suggests its evolution is far from over.

Okotie begins by responding to andcritiquing John Carruthers’ book Scheherezade, or The Future of the EnglishNovel, published in 1927 as part of the ‘To-day and To-morrow’ series – theinspiration for our present-day FUTURES. He then cites others who have since meditatedon the direction of the form: Henry James, D. H. Lawrence, William Burroughs, AnaisNin, Zadie Smith and China Mieville, among others. In doing so, he also tellsthe story of the novel itself, from the realism of the 18th and 19thcenturies, through the early stirrings of modernism with its focus on the’inner life’, right through to the abstraction and experimentation of 21stcentury postmodernism, and beyond. All of which informs Okotie’s own futurevision for the novel – one that extends even further into the reaches of thesubconscious, and speculates on the uneasy role artifical intelligence willplay in the coming decades. The Future of The Novel is a rich andimmersive portrait of an artform which, despite constant claims to the contrary,is more alive and exciting than ever.