In The Repre­senta­tion of Slavery in the Greek Novel Owens presents a thorough investig­ation by an experienced scholar into an aspect of the Greek novels that has previously been taken for granted as merely one of the standard elements of ancient fiction. Instead, Owens presents a refreshing argu­ment that slavery was an impor­tant theme in these novels and he concludes that the two non-sophistic novels (by Xenophon of Ephesus and Chariton) ‘subvert the way the elite thought about slaves’ (p. 2), possibly because they were themselves ex-slaves writing in part for ex-slave readers, and that the later fictions ‘imply an ideological point of view more in con­form­ity with this thinking’ (p. 3). This pre­lim­inary state­ment of the find­ings of the research is later expanded in the conclusion to include two points of specu­lation: that Xeno­phon and Chariton may have been influenced in their repre­sen­tation of slavery by the inclusion of events in Italy and Magna Graecia and ‘Roman practices’ in them (pp. 217-219) and that the neglect of the ancient novels in the history of litera­ture prior to the late twentieth century may have arisen because of their associ­ation with slavery (pp. 219-220).