Frank Kermode is one of our most distinguished and beloved critics of English literature. Here, he contributes a new epilogue to his collection of classic lectures on the relationship of fiction to age-old concepts of apocalyptic chaos and crisis. Prompted by the approach of the millennium, he revisits the book which brings his highly concentrated insights to bear on some of the most unyielding philosophical and aesthetic enigmas. Examining the works of writers from Plato to William Burroughs, Kermode shows how they have persistently imposed their "fictions" upon the face of eternity and how these have reflected the apocalyptic spirit. Kermode then discusses literature at a time when new fictive explanations, as used by Spenser and Shakespeare, were being devised to fit a world of uncertain beginning and end. He goes on to deal perceptively with modern literature - with "traditionalists" such as Yeats, Eliot, and Joyce, as well as contemporary "schismatics," the French "new novelists," and such seminal figures as Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett. Whether weighing the difference between modern and earlier modes of apocalyptic thought, considering the degeneration of fiction into myth, or commenting on the vogue of the Absurd, Kermode is distinctly lucid, persuasive, witty, and prodigal of ideas.

作者在书中阐释了依靠虚构制造意义的必要性。《圣经》的意义在很大程度上产生于读者由它的结尾向开头进行回顾的过程中，《圣经》从开头的《创世纪》到结尾的《启示录》为人类历史提供了一个能产生意义的“十分完美和谐的结构”。古往今来，多少人凭借这一结构认识世界与自我。这一虚构满足了生于历史中间，错过了开头，又赶不上结尾的人确定人生意义的需要。因为按西方阐释学的原则，结尾必须申明开端的目的，必须赋予中间过程以秩序和意义。这也是文学这类”解释性虚构”得以发展的主要原因。这本书针对的是在文学、神学、哲学、社会学等领域中兴起的否定结尾、开端和结构的思潮。作者承认：现在人们难以“想象生活的时间和世界的时间的关系”，并主张文学与批评必须适应现代生存环境，但是并不相信历史连续性会被断裂与危机所取代，要有一条可行的中间路线——“我们的故事必须做到既能发现纯粹的连续性，而又不使自己变得连续”。