Malcolm Bradbury has been one of the central figures in British literature since 1960. As a critic, editor, commentator, entrepreneur, anthologist, and judge for fiction awards he has tirelessly promoted the vitality and importance of contemporary fiction, often in the face of disparagement or declarations that the novel is dead. As a prolific fiction writer himself, he has written some of the most incisive and entertaining novels of his time; beginning as an author of “campus fictions,” he has broadened the scope of his work—in parallel with his own burgeoning career as critic, pundit, and adaptor—so that it may be said to chart the course of the past forty years in the life of the British literary intellectual. Further, he helped to found the writing program at the University of East Anglia, where he taught from 1970 until 1985. The program—as indicated by such graduates as Ian McEwan...