Unlikely Stories : Causality and the Nature of Modern Narrative

This first book-length study of causality and narrative investigates the complex web of causal issues present in all narratives and regularly problematized in twentieth-century works.

These include the shifting laws of probability that attempt to govern fictional worlds, the reader's implication in the causal dilemmas that confront central characters, the contested relations between philosophic theories and fictional practices, and the role of cause in determining just what constitutes a narrative.