The Observer, 30 October 2005
In Martin Amis’s Heavy Water, there is a story about poets called ‘Career Move’. Amis, in all his brilliant perversity, imagines a world in which poets are feted in Hollywood, flown in to develop a poem over conference call and spend the rest of their time lounging by the pools of [...]

Magic Seeds
by VS Naipaul
Picador £7.99, pp294
In this sequel to his last novel, Half a Life, Naipaul again addresses the ideas of his earlier books: displacement and exile, often drawn from personal experience (he was born of Indian stock in Trinidad, came to England in the 1950s and now lives in Wiltshire).
Willie Chandran, the man who [...]

Browsing is often underrated. Everyone from teachers to government officials to authors themselves talk up reading and its inherent worth. But what of that crucial selection process that goes before - what of browsing?
In recent weeks I’ve attempted to browse in a number of major (and minor) bookshops with mixed results. My favourite has been [...]