This tour de force by a master of experimental novels finds the author reflecting on her old age and its effects on her writing. As she reflects on her own career, her experiments with narrative, and on the narrative she writes here, she ultimately reasserts herself and accepts the life behind her.

The novelist and critic Christine Brooke-Rose investigates those difficult border zones between the 'invented' and the 'real' in fiction.

Cutting across the wide field of 'fantastic' literature, Professor Brooke-Rose examines the essential differences between several 'fantastic' narratives against the background of realistic fiction.