Robert Boyers is editor of the quarterly Salmagundi, Tisch Professor of Arts and Letters at Skidmore College, and Director of the New York State Writers' Institute. He writes regularly on contemporary arts and culture for The New Republic, and his essays on politics and culture are widely published. He lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.

"An important book...Even his detractors will not read such disparate novels as Greene's The Quiet American or Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle in quite the same way again. This, as much as anything else, is what 'critical authority' finally means." - The Georgia Review "Boyers has written a compelling study, one that convincingly demonstrates that the political novel is a category that is not only worth our consideration but is essential to any intelligent, imaginative reflection on politics in the modern world." - Southern Humanities Review"