Children of silence

In Children of Silence distinguished literary critic Michael Wood presents his most wide-ranging work to date. A series of reflections on the literary landscape of our time - from the writings of Roland Barthes to those of Stephen King - the book explores such issues as the shift of interest from novel to story, the blurring of the line between fiction and criticism, the persistence of the notion of paradise, the lure of horror, and the tendency of fiction both to reflect and to resist contemporary history. Children of Silence shows that a living literature is constantly in dialogue with history, both asking history's questions in a different mode and asking the questions that history cannot ask. In an age when literature itself often seems to be threatened, Wood illustrates many of the forms in which literature continues to define the way we see ourselves.