Narrative and Freedom: the Shadows of Time by Gary Saul Morson

This book investigates the question of whether time is closed (and our fates are fixed) or whether it is open. Instead of looking at the question simply philosophically, Morson uses literature (and particularly the realist fiction of nineteenth century Russia, as practiced by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky). Even though fiction seems to imply closed time (both through devices such as a foreshadowing and backshadowing and through its ability to place the reader outside of the time of the narrative, which is always already fixed), Morson suggests that there are ways to read the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky that work against this fated view of history--namely sideshadowing. Sideshadowing is a technique by which a work of fiction opens up parallel histories so that the reader cannot determine which of these histories is actually "true." I found this book very convincing and provocative.