In The Theory of the Novel Lukács suggests the novel is, above all others, the form which expresses ‘transcendental homelessness’. That is, it articulates the novelist’s longing for a spiritual and emotional home no longer available in a world without a deity. Through consideration of post-modern theory and the attributes of belief as it relates to fiction; through exploration of my own practice in writing The Brockenspectre and through critique of three novels: proto-modern – Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables; modernist – Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; and post-modern – Nabokov’s Pnin; the essays of this thesis will examine the fundamental nature of the novelist’s exile, and the way he or she inhabits the text in order to regain the paradise lost. For despite the deconstruction of concepts such as centre and author, it is posited that the idea of the novel as the site, the location, of transcendental homelessness offers the possibility of momentarily regaining the Eden from which the author has been ejected.