'Book titles are important, albeit troubling things. I have a particular ineptitude in proposing titles for my own books, in deciding on a word, a phrase or a clause that both captures the core contention of the book and also happens to be catchy and accessible to that frightening, intangible, crucial Other of writing practice, the reader. But this conundrum may be unique to the condition of the ‘creative writer’ who has, by the very mechanism of this condition, a rather fuzzy notion of the reader. For a more specialist, academic writer, the task seems somewhat easier: such a writer can enter an existing discourse – apropos of their academic specialty – with more surefootedness, and may, instead of aiming to seduce a fickle reader, simply express the central thesis of their work and be done with it.' (Introduction)