Novels, for me, have come from somewhere I wasn’t looking. In my twenties I was carrying an idea about a woman wandering around Ireland on a quest she didn’t understand and I sat in the Reading Room o

We have wandered many months through this land of Building Blocks. It is time for a break. Learning is a weary trek. And writing is not all about learning. Writing is about, well, writing. The doing o

Thomas Pynchon’s haunted vision of history

My Berlin probably peaked on 9th November 2014. In a spacious borrowed flat in Mitte, not far from trendy Arkonaplatz, I had countersigned a passport application for a baby just born to friends: Briti

A reactionary radical’s case against progress

There are, of course, many ways to tell stories, and I’m sure most of you will be used to writing and/or reading short stories and novels alike. But let us not forget there is a middle ground – and I’