Philip Womack
Lynch Mob
This curious novel, Cornelius Medvei’s third, purports to be a political biography detailing the life of Mr Bolsover, a man who has ‘passed into folklore’, who either died in a ‘hail of bullets’ or ‘fled to Panama’. We are led to believe, by the dry voice of the ‘biographer’, that he was a man of consequence. Nothing, however, is straightforward; as the biographer (ungendered, unnamed, although there is the slightest of hints that it might be a woman) warns, the most forthcoming witnesses are also the ‘least credible’. The book is an exploration of how myths are engendered as much as it is a whimsical satire of political ambition, and it is also very much in love with the Sussex countryside that it so beautifully evokes.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'When the language starts functioning as a character in fiction, when it is there drawing attention to itself ... It’s not anything that anybody really takes seriously.'
Our interview with Anthony Burgess from 1983.
http://ow.ly/5u0y50yrjoO
'Sabotage became so prevalent that bankers even created their own terms – ‘asymmetric information’, ‘lack of financial literacy’, ‘the principal-agent dilemma’ – to describe how they might turn a dime from customers’ gullibility or ignorance.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/master-criminals-of-the-universe
'Unlike much that was extracted from India, these paintings were not plunder, and those who created them were properly remunerated and often received due credit.'
@PParkerWriting on 'Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/artists-for-hire