Anna Funder’s first book, Stasiland, was a non-fiction work that explored life in East Germany during the Cold War. Her new book is a novel but one based very closely on real events.
All That I Am
Anna FunderViking 2011, Hardcover, 370 pages, £16.99
All That I Am tells the story a group of German activists during the 1930s as [...]
This trilogy was recommended to me about 20 years ago. It’s taken me a while to get around to reading it, clearly. That’s a shame because all three books are excellent and reading them has made me keen to read more by Davies.
The Deptford Trilogy
Robertson DaviesPenguin 2011, Paperback, 832 pages, £15.99
Robertson Davies was one of Canada’s most [...]
Not long after the success of Thomas’s The End of Mr Y, PopCo appeared in the shops, complete with a similar looking cover. I assumed it was her next novel but in fact PopCo was published first.
PopCo
Scarlett ThomasCanongate Books Ltd 2008, Paperback, 464 pages, £8.99
That shows once you start to read it. PopCo is less sophisticated than [...]
Metafiction – writing that takes fiction itself as one of its subjects – can be playful, thought-provoking and mystifying. Here are five fascinating – and mind-boggling – classics for those who want to explore the genre.
This is one of those books that could be considered to be a novel or as a series of interconnected short stories, in which certain characters drift from key roles into bit parts and back again. I lean slightly towards the former but I can imagine people making the case for it being a short [...]
A tiger roams the streets of Manhattan, destroying entire buildings on its rampage, the whole of Downtown is obscured by an unexplained grey fog and a fad is developing for mysterious vases, called chaldrons, that sell for extraordinary prices on eBay.
Chronic City
Jonathan LethemFaber and Faber 2011, Paperback, 560 pages, £7.99
Against this odd background Jonathan Lethem sets the [...]
These two books make up the other half of the Library of America volume collecting Roth’s work between 1986 and 1991. While The Counterlife and Deception explored the boundary between fiction and fact from one side, these two books approach from the opposite direction.
Novels and Other Narratives 1986-1991 (Library of America)
Ross Miller (Editor) Library of America [...]
Last year, I read four Philip Roth novels – the first of his Zuckerman series, anthologised by The Library of America as Zuckerman Bound. This year I read the next Library of America volume, which collects the four books Roth wrote between 1986 and 1991.
Novels and Other Narratives 1986-1991 (Library of America)
Ross Miller (Editor) Library of [...]
I read this back in May and in the time it’s taken me to write about it the football season has rolled around again. Wilson’s book is a thorough guide to the history of tactics in football, from the days when the majority of players were attackers, through to the modern game, in which teams [...]
This is the fifth and final book of my short run of experimental and post-modern fiction. This one is perhaps the most radical of the five but, though it’s an interesting experiment, it’s not really one that engages.
Wittgenstein’s Mistress
David MarksonDalkey Archive Press 2006, Paperback, 248 pages, £9.99
The book is a stream-of-consciousness narration by a woman who is, [...]
