Anthony Gardner
Fiendish Foresight
Paul Theroux is not an author to underplay a useful motif. In the first paragraph of his new novel, we find a planeful of passengers settled down for a night flight in their sleep-masks. No sooner have they arrived at their destination – Ecuador – than the protagonist, Slade Steadman, and his lover Ava Katsina embark on an erotic game of blind man’s buff; and when, shortly afterwards, they set off along a jungle river to experience a Secoya drug ceremony, their guide insists on covering their eyes with strips of cloth.
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'"Dutch Light" roots its subject in his local environment, explaining, for example, how an abundance of sand for making glass led naturally to a thriving business in optical instruments in Holland.'
Patricia Fara on the life & work of Christiaan Huygens.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/through-the-magnifying-glass
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'We may not be able to shield ourselves from irrational passions such as hatred, anger, envy, mockery and pride, or from the buffetings of circumstance, but we can rise above them by obtaining insight into their nature and their causes.'
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