A trajectory

General relativity tells us something enticing about time. It doesn’t tell us what many would like it to tell us, … More

For the readers

There’s something wonderful about being immersed in the world of a book, something which for me is even more pronounced … More

Veils of allusion

Iain Sinclair walks London’s sacred geometries, pursuing a dérive that moves obliquely across the familiar, prosaic territories of the city. … More

Ruthlessly imagined

It’s very unusual for me to read a recently published novel, much less a prize-winning one. This is mainly because … More

Impossible speech

I have a pet theory. I would like to articulate it eventually through a scholarly monograph, but for the moment … More

Migratory death-drives

Emigration seems to offer a fresh start, a blank slate; this is often what is hoped for by those that … More

A few wooden buildings

Places have memories. This is not to propose the pathetic fallacy that they have feelings, consciousness, thoughts or intentions, but … More

The book closed, the world continues

The best speculative fiction, particularly of the secondary-world variety, immerses its readers in its setting, often in initially quite baffling … More

A cautionary elegy

William Boyd thinks that The Radetzky March is ‘one of the enduring monuments of twentieth-century European literature’; I’d never heard … More

Fear of the unknown

I only ever read H.P. Lovecraft’s work in a haphazard manner, and my familiarity with his oeuvre has owed as … More

Traces of lives on geographies

I’ve been skirting around W.G. Sebald for years. I read The Rings of Saturn, as I suspect many people have … More

A humane document

Mother London was something of a surprise to me, inasmuch as it’s something I needed to read, something that should … More

Sculpted in the clay of language

Christopher Tolkien made it perfectly clear in Beren and Lúthien, published in 2017, that it was the last book he … More

The opposite of psychogeography

Patrick Rothfuss is an excellent writer slumming it in the undemanding environs of commercial fiction. Don’t get me wrong – … More