The thirteen essays in this collection, published here for the first time, survey the work of some of the most major British and Irish novelists of the past thirty years. Featured in it are several writers - Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch and William Golding, amongst others - who established themselves before 1960, and whose work since then has continued to develop in interesting new ways. Most of the essays, however, deal with novelists who have made their appearence since 1960, and who illustrate some of the distinctive characteristics of British and Irish fiction of the last three decades.;James Acheson is co-editor of "Beckett's Later Fiction and Drama: Texts for Company", and has published essays on Beckett and other modern writers in various edited collections and journals.
