What is the relationship between fiction and knowledge? How much can Crime and Punishment tell us about the habits of Russian pawnbrokers? Would you know how to build a raft after reading
I own two photographs of Jules Renard (1864-1910). There is no indication of when either of them was taken, and at times I have wondered if they are really of the same man. In the first, from a...
Hyena Like something out of Brueghel, maned in white and hungry like the dark, the bat ears pricked, the face a grey velour, more cat than dog, less caracal than fanalouc or civet – here is...
One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted – One need not be a House – The Brain has Corridors – surpassing Material Place – ‘All men say “What”...
Who would have credited their late August collapse? They flourish like jumpweed over these punishing summers, or did do, adversaries going faint here alongside the river. Eighteen-wheelers bust...
In the fourth section of The Emigrants, W.G. Sebald (or rather, his narrative alter ego) travels back to Germany from Norwich to look into the childhood of Max Ferber, an artist based loosely on...
According to W.H. Davies, tramps often buried surplus items of clothing or footwear by the side of the road, knowing they could retrieve them should they pass the same way again. In his second...
Brasch in his velvet voice and signature purple tie complained to his journal that you had ‘interrupted’. I wasn’t sorry. That was Somervell’s coffee shop...
In Vladimir Sorokin’s novel The Queue, one of the protagonists is struggling with a crossword: ‘1 Across – Russian Soviet writer.’ Suggestions come from people next to him...
This is a remarkable and tantalising book, luminously evocative, acutely observed, joyously written, intellectually evasive, wilfully unfocused, suicidally diffuse. Who could say, after its 500...
In 1892, while H.G. Wells was transforming himself from a draper’s assistant to a student of science, he married his cousin Isabel. He ungallantly described her in his Experiment in...
‘You’d better take an interest in the earth and the air, for your own poor body will go there some day.’ That was the sort of wisdom that used to come with free school milk at my...
Something remarkable happened one night in 1920, during a performance of Iolanthe at the Prince’s Theatre. After the chorus had sung To say she is his mother is an utter bit of folly! Oh,...
Embassytown features the following: intelligent horse-sized insectoid aliens, faster-than-light propulsion, androids, organic technology (‘biorigging’), warpspace (‘the...
Interlude I don’t believe she married him Because he was in the fish business Remarked Lois, which quieted The ensemble some From upstairs. An old Leonard Cohen tune It was unfortunate the...
There aren’t many novels with exclamation marks in their titles. Used without irony – as in Charles Kingsley’s Westward Ho! – they strive too hard, leaving us no room for...
Perhaps the finest piece of storytelling in this novel has to do with the death of a dog. Three characters are involved: Michael Luxton, a taciturn dairy farmer; Jack, his elder son, aged 26; and...
It’s a Hot Night A swarm of half-naked, tattoo-covered bodies To squeeze through on the sidewalk With a wary glance at a dagger dripping with blood And a winged serpent paused to strike....