These novels, all in the literary-prize-winning league, tell us of areas with which we are probably unfamiliar. William Kennedy's Ironweed is about Albany, capital of the State of New York. Julian Barnes writes about the France of Gustave Flaubert, as discussed in an irrational, pedantic manner by a British admirer of Flaubert's work. Anita Desai, daughter of a German mother and a Bengali father, writes about the world of Indian poets, a very male (not macho) group devoted to the Urdu language as it struggles against 'that vegetarian monster, Hindi'. This novel, In Custody, is for me the least 'foreign', the least 'alien': it is Commonwealth literature, pertinent to Wales and Africa and the West Indies.

LRB 1 November 1984 | PDF Download