What is distinctive about American fiction What sets it apart from the greatest of English or European fiction Stephen Fender, who has lectured on the US novel for more than 40 years, explores the forces which shaped it, from the mixture of exhilaration and anxiety caused by living in a New World, to the conscious need some novelists felt to distance themselves from the fusty traditions and ways of thinking of the Old World. Stephen Fender puts ten of the greatest American novels under the microscope... The Portrait of a Lady Huckleberry Finn Sister Carrie My ntonia The Age of Innocence The Great Gatsby A Farewell to Arms The Sound and the Fury The Grapes of Wrath Native Son