In these brilliant and illuminating essays, Amos Oz brings his experience as a novelist, teacher and critic to bear on the different ways in which writers enter into this strange and seductive contract with readers.Analysing in detail the opening sections of novels and stories by such writers as Chekhov, Kafka, Gogol, Garcia M�rquez and Raymond Carver, and with reference to a range of classics of world literature, Oz explores how writers reel the reader in. THE STORY BEGINS is an accessible, valuable and entertaining companion for students and lovers of literature which takes us into the head of the writer, to relish the creative process and, above all, to reclaim the pure pleasure of reading.