The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE recommends an impressive impersonation of Bob Dylan
Class menagerie
FIONA O’CONNOR assesses a dense and overpopulated novel that isn’t satire and doesn’t go deep
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Here, Vermiglio, William Tell and Wolf Man
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ANDY MIAH advocates the use of AI to assist people by expanding access to global literature and culture
EWAN KOTZ relishes a veteran Glasgow band that have lost none of their verve for live performance
Caledonian Road
Andrew O’Hagan
Faber, £20
FREDERIC JAMESON used the term “national allegory” for the view that literature is really an attempt to discover a country’s identity, and therefore its inhabitants.
In Caledonian Road, big thumper of a novel at over 600 pages, Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan offers a post-Brexit, liberalist mea culpa of sorts, repositioning Britain in its isolated decline.
O’Hagan’s focus is a London “levitating on a sea of dirty money,” as Sergei Magnitsky put it. Emerging from the pandemic in 2020, the masks are coming off and there’s profit to be extracted.
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