SID SMITH WRITES fascinating novels for part of the way. Then something happens. His first novel, Something like a House, is about a British soldier who wanders away from the Korean War and ends up in a remote region of China, where he melts into a non-Han community. It is a unique setting and the soldier, although virtually mute, makes a memorable central figure. In the novel’s second half Smith gets a bee in his bonnet about local and international politics, the story dwindles, and so did my interest, although the book won the Whitbread Prize for first novels and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Mar 2003

Sweet and Sour

Case Closed?

They Have Been at the Core of Great Events

Tutorials from a Transvestite

Dog Days

What’s Behind the Blue Door?

Communist Poster Boy

Invasive Procedures

Flow Country

A Right Way to Remember?

Girls Allowed

Dig for Victory

Crossing the Yalu

Dining at Lizard’s Thicket

Escape from Entebbe

Wild West

Sage Government

One Man and His Lama

A Sorority of Character

Stealing the Crown’s Jewel

Tale From Tiananmen

The Shanghai Beat

Rebel Province

Picture The Revolution

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