"Fiction and nonexistence are closely intertwined because fiction often talks about non-existent entities, such as Hamlet and Sherlock Holmes. In Much Ado About Nonexistence. A. P. Martinich and Avrum Stroll, two of America's leading philosophers, provide a penetrating study of the relationship between fiction, existence, truth, and reference. Included in their discussion is a new theory of fiction, based on the speech act theory of H. P. Grice. The authors also critically discuss two versions of the theory of definite descriptions, Frege's and Russell's, and develop on alternative to Hilary Putnam's account of the relationship between natural kind terms and the world."--BOOK JACKET.