Like a precocious fireballer at top of the prospect rankings … a kid who has shown so much promise and from whom so much is expected … who has three plus pitches and is working on a fourth … whose intangibles are as off the charts as his athleticism … who is putting it all together at AAA and knocking at the door … who will make men look like boys … and who ends up THE OPPOSITE OF ALL THOSE THINGS – that’s this book.

St Matthew is going to poke out your eyes. Or some such. After what seemed like a millennium of exile from the Motherland, we go back to the heart (and other parts) of Russian literature with a Tolstoy short story. Brilliant.

A novel that says it’s based on Wuthering Heights is taking a risk – because Wuthering Heights is a crazy effective soporific. But the further it strays from the original, the better A True Novel becomes. Don’t underestimate your originality, Minae Mizumura! You’ve produced an eminently entertaining read. In a nice turn, this very long book is actually quite short.

Feel like making glove?? That's not a typo. This week we discuss perhaps the best passage in any of Philip Roth's novels, the 'glovemaking scene' (again, not a typo) in American Pastoral. And we do this with American lit scholar and Gloversville, NY...

The Messiah is coming! His arrival is imminent! That’s the bad news... The good news is his arrival and social schedule are narrated with a combination of enthralled immediacy and distrustful distance by a Nobel Laureate, Isaac Bashevis...

'They believe what they say in the moment they say it.' And then the moment is gone, and someone's stuck with a desiccated horse's head or a painting of Jesus framed in piss. In this episode we learn about the high prices and low...

Did we like this novel? What does it mean to like? What is our past, really, if we continue to relive it? And relieve it? And relive it? And you get the point, but I'll say it again. And again. And – you have just sampled the experience...

Enter the eminently other world of Malte Laurids Brigge – and don't plan on coming back in one piece. The big window shatters and the little pieces giggle. What? You didn't hear that? We talk about Rainer Maria Rilke's one and only novel with...

I Was So Looking Forward To This Book. Shame On Me

Things are not what they appear to be, and not even what they appear later to be. Foxes are animals that cannot be trusted, and sometimes they are not even animals. This is that in Sjón's slender novel. Intriguing.