An absolutely first class brilliant book. A work of fiction and imagination that seems entirely real. Set in the bizarre and foul world of Kim Il Sung’s North Korea, he relentlessly exposes what it is like to live under the insane dictatorship of this poisoned state, and the contradictions in self behaviour and self correcting thought it requires to even survive. A brilliant and thoroughly original and unique book. Masterful.

I thought I had read this, but reading the first page in a Brisbane bookshop really grabbed me. Now 50 pages in I’m beginning to feel he’s lost the thread and that the extremely funny prose that seduced me is losing its pull. Will give it a bit more of a go. Which I did and finished by the last night, but wtf? Conspiracy theory as a novel. So many good things, so unsatisfactorily woven together, and so much that is frankly puzzling.

Often novels end weakly. The author seems to run out of steam. The only category of novels in which this is absolutely unacceptable is the Thriller, or Detective novel. The climax, the end, is the whole point. This one I found took me a page or two to understand and then built and built and went off like a rocket. I loved it.

Vintage Carver. Literally and publishing. This Vintage book 2009. The original from 1981. So simply written, so brilliantly expressed. Often the same sad tale of alcohol and the falling away of love. These are wonderful short stories. He is amongst the greatest of the genre. Found them in Brisbane and devoured them.

His first novel. The end of the world caused by anthropology. Fabulous, funny and brilliant. An anthropological discovery near an expanding Casino, causes fascination, theory and ultimately chaos to the whole world except the discoverers in ways you neither predict nor could foresee. He really is the real thing.

An ironic life of Shostakovich or how to live under tyranny, oddly the same subject that Adam Johnson tackles so brilliantly in The Orphan Master’s Son, though here done as a narrative biography of the real composer. Perhaps because it is based on truth and isn’t fiction it fails to come to life. It isn't biography either but a strange hybrid. It’s hard to know who is telling this tale. It is pseudo biography but it stirs no emotions except pity. You feel sympathy towards this highly gifted composer being forced to compromise for Stalin, but I think by adopting this method of telling his story it feels more like a lecture and I miss the dialogue and character at which Julian Barnes is so amazingly good. A puzzler.

An interesting Maigret. He starts with a mystery he immediately explains, and follows the runner, a middle aged business man weary of his dull life who escapes to the South of France.

In the fine translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I am about half way through my third reading of this amazing book, and let’s face it, probably my last…. In a copy sent to me by Mike Nichols. As I am off on tour I shall continue reading the same translation on my I pad. Certainly easier on the wrist. Of course inspired by watching the exceptionally good BBC TV series. This is one of my favourite novels.