Matthew Adams

Dissing Diston

Lionel Asbo: State of England

By

Jonathan Cape 276pp £18.99 order from our bookshop

Deep in the opening section of this rich and remarkable novel, the young Desmond Pepperdine – ‘repeatedly amazed by the total tonnage of what he didn’t know’, and by this stage the adult beneficiary of those adolescent ‘pangs and quickenings of intelligence within his being’ – speaks the following words: ‘It’s like a fairy tale. Magic.’

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