FANTASTIC FICTION – Escapes to other places and other times

Herman Wouk’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Wouk) boldly dramatic, brilliantly entertaining novel of life and mutiny on a US Navy warship in the Pacific theatre. This was immediately embraced as one of the first serious works of American fiction to grapple with the moral complexities and the human consequences of World War II. In the intervening 60 years, The Caine Mutiny […]

The Horse’s Mouth, the third and most celebrated volume of Joyce Cary’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Cary) First Trilogy, is one of the finest novels ever written about an artist. Its painter hero, the charming and larcenous Gulley Jimson, has an insatiable genius for creation and a no less remarkable appetite for destruction. Is he a great artist? A has-been? Or an

In The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bowen) brilliantly recreates the tense and dangerous atmosphere of London during the bombing raids of World War II. Many people have fled the city, and those who stayed behind find themselves thrown together in an odd intimacy born of crisis. Stella Rodney is one of those who chose

This is arguably Graham Greene’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene and http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5180/the-art-of-fiction-no-3-graham-greene) masterpiece, although my personal favourite is The End of the Affair. In a poor, remote section of Southern Mexico, the paramilitary group, the Red Shirts, have taken control. God has been outlawed, and the priests have been systematically hunted down and killed. Now, the last priest is on

In this breathtaking adventure story from Paul Theroux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Theroux), the paranoid and brilliant inventor Allie Fox takes his family to live in the Honduran jungle, determined to build a civilization better than the one they’ve left. Fleeing from an America he sees as mired in materialism and conformity, he hopes to rediscover a purer life. But

The summary of this 2008 novel from Sebastian Barry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Barry) is as follows. In the beginning, Dr. William Grene’s interest in an almost impossibly old woman is merely professional, tinged perhaps with a hint of curiosity. Roseanne McNulty, one hundred years old, was one of the most beautiful girls in County Sligo in her youth. She has

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is grey. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them

There are not many historical novels of which it can be said that they illuminate both the time that forms their subject matter and the time in which they are read: Doctor Copernicus is among the very best of them. The work of Nicholas Koppernigk, better known as Copernicus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus), shattered the medieval view of

To rendezvous with her archeologist fiance in Jordan, Barbara Vaughn must first pass through the Mandelbaum Gate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbaum_Gate), which divides strife-torn Jerusalem. A half-jewish convert to Catholicism, an Englishwoman of strong and stubborn convictions, Barbara will not be dissuaded from her ill-timed pilgrimage despite a very real threat of bodily harm and the fearful admonishments