FANTASTIC FICTION – Escapes to other places and other times

Heaven, reported St John in Revelation, was a cubical city 12,000 furlongs high made of ‘pure gold, like unto clear glass’. That was 1,900 years ago, and Heaven as it is today has changed out of all recognition. This book is the account of a recent journey to the metropolis at the nerve-centre of the […]

This novel from Norman Mailer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mailer) was over a decade in the making. Swiftly Ancient Evenings (1983, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Evenings) pulls its reader inside a starnge fictional frame of consciousness. A soul or body entombed is struggling to burst free, desperate not alone for light and air but for prayer and story – promised comforters that have been treacherously withheld

This is an addictive read, combining the tantalising page turning plotlines of a blockbuster with the erudition of Anthony Burgess and the light comic touch of Alison Lurie. Robertson Davies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_Davies and http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2441/the-art-of-fiction-no-107-robertson-davies) introduces us to more than just a novel. He creates for us a world populated by scholars, priests, witches and itinerants, whose journey leads to

In 1969, Philip Roth’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Roth) most famous character, the sex-obsessed Alexander Portnoy confessed to his analyst: ‘What I’m saying, Doctor, is that I don’t seem to stick my dick up these girls, as much as I stick it up their backgrounds – as though through fucking I will discover America.’ That was 40 years ago, but

Bernard Malamud’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Malamud) second novel, originally published in 1957, is the story of Morris Bober, a grocer in postwar Brooklyn, who ‘wants better’ for himself and his family. First two robbers appear and hold him up; then things take a turn for the better when broken-nosed Frank Alpine becomes his assistant. But there are complications: Frank,

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