John Sutherland takes the reader on a literary journey from the first English novels of three hundred years ago to the present avalanche of ten thousand a year. In a series of informed and intelligent conversations set around a variety of exemplary texts he shows that reading a novel is not a spectator sport, but an intense participatory activity. People of all ages, classes and nationalities read novels - Sutherland gives us new insights into what we read, new questions to pose and the means to pursue them.