Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

‘Wolf Hall’ became 2009’s Booker Prize Winner last night, justifying its status as bookmakers’ favourite. I haven’t read Hilary Mantel’s historical novel, based on Thomas Cromwell’s assent from tradesman’s son in Putney to chief minister of Henry VIII. I have, however, just finished ‘The Glass room’, one of the beaten shortlistees, written by Simon Mawer. Clearly historical fiction, often regarded rather sniffily by critics, is currently fashionable. Mawer’s tale falls into the category too. It examines the tides of twentieth century European history which lapped around the location of its eponymous ‘Glasraum’ in Mittel Europe. A wealthy Jewish industrialist and his new Aryan wife (the Landauers) commission a precocious architect to design their futuristic home in Czechoslovakia. It is finished in the 1930s just in time to form the backdrop for a lot of sex, Nazi invasion, genetic experiments, communism and a tearful reunion. Mawer writes well and he has chosen a clever settin...

I wrote a short piece back in December 2007 about the novelistic qualities of some of the year’s news stories. The ‘canoe man’, now hitting the bulletins once more as he attempts to find a publisher for his memoirs, and the ‘polonium murder’ are two prominent examples. Now, in 2009, we have the ‘Arctic Sea mystery’ in which a four thousand ton ship vanished for three weeks and then reappeared in puzzling circumstances. Russia claims to have apprehended eight hijackers whom it alleges stole the vessel. But intriguingly it appears that they did not use force and nor were the fifteen crew members ‘under armed control’. The Russian navy’s recovery of the ‘Arctic Sea’ has, in the short term, added to the mystery, rather than solving it. However, the authorities have undertaken to provide a full explanation, once they have concluded their investigation. What is certain is that few fiction writers have dreamt up a plot so pregnant with suspenseful possibility.

Will Self’s fiction often lingers in urban hinterlands. He is a laureate of the strangeness of the functional. His prose describes hospital buildings, underpasses, flyovers. Anywhere indeed where there is a pervading sense of dislocation. It is hardly surprising to learn therefore that the author likes to walk in such environments. And being Will Self, he has a rather long and prohibitive word for these danders – “ psychogeography ”. I stand to be corrected, but I believe what he may be trying to say is that many urban environments are not designed with the pedestrian in mind and that therefore walking in them is a strange experience which reclaims that geography as something experienceable on an immediate human level. In undertaking these walks Self is re-establishing a sense of place which can easily be lost in the hustle and bustle of merely living our lives in functional topographies. If you need justification for drunkenly wandering up the hard shoulder of a motorway, if you...