Bradbury argues that almost a century since the emergence of Modernism, it is now possible to see the entire period in perspective. It is clear that the first 50 years - from Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Robert Louis Stevenson, through James Joyce, D H Lawrence, E M Forster, to Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood and George Orwell - have been extensively discussed in print. The years since World War II, though, have not been examined in depth, yet have produced talents such as Graham Greene, Angus Wilson, Beckett, Doris Lessing, Margaret Drabble, Angela Carter, Ian McEwan, Kingsley Amis and Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Fay Weldon, Salman Rushdie and Timothy Mo. The author's concern to see the radical century of fiction as a developing whole enables him to discuss not only the major names, but to include in his overview writers on the fringe of the critical mainstream, or at the sharp edge of experiment, figures as various as John Galsworthy, Firbank, Jean Rhys, Edward Upward, Lawrence Durrell, J G Ballard, B S Johnson and John Le Carré.