His ability to project readers into his crisply summonsed worlds allows space for vicarious understanding. It stimulates one imaginatively to grasp at the core meanings of lives which, via the author's subtle guidance, one knows but did not realise one knows. Here particularly I have in mind his tale The Greenhouse Effect. This centres on the constructed island of supposedly timeless culture which the extravagantly wealthy Grand Duke Pawel Ivanovich Manilov erects in False Bay, having failed to buy Robben Island for his secluded home, his palace of aesthetics for aesthetes. The rapt audience of self-celebrated cognoscenti also goes under.
Local culture is coarse, vulgar.
Those of you who do indulge these banal vulgarities will grab at this commanding volume. It is as decidedly local as it is universal, as incisive as it is intellectually dense, as moving as it is beguiling. All rights strictly reserved. Reliance on the information this site contains is at your own risk. Please click here to read the user agreement.