All novels are historical novels, as my late teacher Graham Hough used to say; but some are more historical than others. Novelists can improve on history, and if they are Science Fiction writers they can anticipate it. History can be invented, but most novelists only do so within strict limits. According to Hough, they would tend to invent a Prime Minister but not a major political party, a provincial town but not a capital city. A writer like Joyce can put together an immensely painstaking reconstruction of the past without linking it in any way to a historical narrative, while other novelists treat strictly contemporary events as history-in-the-making, much as journalists do. Rather like Joyce in Ulysses, Jose Donoso in Curfew tracks his protagonist's adventures during a 24-hour period in the life of a modern city, but there the resemblances stop.

LRB 6 December 1990 | PDF Download