During the last 30 years, the Russian thinker M M Bakhtin has achieved great international recognition for his work with -- among other subjects -- literary theory and philosophy of language, and inspiration from his research is to be seen in almost all fields of the human sciences. However, Bakhtins authorship focused primarily on one particular phenomenon, namely the novel. In this book a number of the worlds leading Bakhtin scholars discusses Bakhtins special understanding of the novel, both in relation to the status, the novel occupies in the existing theoretical and philosophical debate, and in the historical context in which it was created. The articles were originally presented at a conference held at the University of Copenhagen, 1998, and have been revised and augmented for the publication.