A 1996 Choice Outstanding Academic Book. A 1996 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. "One of the most successful literary lies," declares Margaret Anne Doody, "is the English claim to have invented the novel. . . . One of the best-kept literary secrets is the existence of novels in antiquity." In fact, as Doody goes on to demonstrate, the novel of the Roman Empire is the product of African, Western Asian, and European influences. It is with this argument that The True Story of the Novel overturns and alters widely held views of the history of the novel. "An erudite, intelligent and imaginative work of literary scholarship. With vivacity, grace, and wit, Doody traces the history from the ancient novels of Apuleius and Heliodorus through the Renaissance fictions of Boccaccio, Cervantes, and Rabelais to the 'official' birth of the novel in 18th-century England. . . . More than a work of brilliant and inventive scholarship, this is an invitation to the great adventure of novel reading."--Boston Globe "Written with verve and wit . . . by any standard an extraordinary and idiosyncratic achievement."--Frank Kermode, The London Review of Books "Big, passionate . . . a bold and contrary statement."--Chronicle of Higher Education "Offers a corrective to those who find the origins of the novel in the 16th or 17th century. . . . Her treatment is thorough and sophisticated but accessible to the general reader. It is also ambitious and one of the few works that can truly claim to look at world literature."--Library Journal