Published by The University of Chicago Press, 311 pp. Decorative softback, minor rubbing, lightly bumped top corners from page 209 to rear cover. A Probable State: The Novel, The Contract, and the Jews by Irene Tucker. Why has the realist novel been persistently understood as promoting liberalism? Can this tendency be reconciled with an equally familiar tendency to see the novel as a national form? In "A Probable State", Irene Tucker builds a revisionary argument about liberalism and the realist novel by shifting the focus from the rise of both in the 18th century to their breakdown at the end of the 19th. Through a series of intricate and absorbing readings, Tucker relates the decline of realism and the eroding logic of liberalism to the question of Jewish characters and writers and to shifting ideas of community and nation. Whereas previous critics have explored the relationship between liberalism and the novel by studying the novel's liberal characters, Tucker argues that the liberal subject is represented not merely within the novel, but in the experience of the novel's form as well. PETER J. HADLEY Bookseller ABA ILAB (Harwich Old Books) 21 Market Street, Harwich, Essex CO12 3DX, UK Telephone: (+44) (0) 1255 551667 Email: books@hadley.co.uk Established 1982. Traditional shop open Friday and Saturday 10-5, Sundays 1-5 and other times by chance or by appointment. Website has over 6000 hand-picked titles and is regularly updated - visit http://www.hadley.co.uk. Peter J. Hadley Bookseller Ltd. Registered in England No. 050843449. Registered office as above. VAT Reg. No. 489 0588 89.