Richard Hughes (1900-1976) author of A High Wind in Jamaica, In Hazard and The Human Predicament is widely acknowledged as a popular and successful novelist. This first major study of his novels persuasively argues the case for regarding Hughes as a sophisticated modernist novelist and a far more complex and original artist than previously supposed.

'This is an admirable and, in my opinion, seminal work of criticism and nobody with a serious interest in the twentieth-century novel can afford to ignore it.' (New Welsh Review)