Fantastic Metropolis

Dossier by Stepan Chapman. In crystalline prose these stories take us on brief journeys of strangeness which simultaneously delight, trouble and astonish with their sheer power of invention. Genius at work.

Impossible Encounters by Zoran Živković. Hard to choose just one of Živković’s wonderful ‘mosaic novels,’ all of which ally compelling storytelling with intellectual play and meditation—leaving an echo in the mind that goes on asking questions long after the book is finished.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. Gripping as a novel, infuriating as a thesis, it certainly makes you think.

Persuasion by Jane Austen. Not the greatest of her novels, but how completely in command she is of her cool, spacious and sardonic prose, her penetrating dissection of human nature.

The Brontë Myth by Lucasta Miller. From Gaskell’s Victorian apologia to 20th century psychobiography, from the ‘purple heather school’ to souvenir teatowels, a fascinating exposé of the way the Brontë story has been manipulated, appropriated and mythologised. Great stuff.