#boyd_william

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Ronan Bennett, The Catastrophist

Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

William Boyd, A Good Man in Africa

Justin Cartwright, Masai Dreaming

Buchi Emechta, Rape of Shavi

Giles Foden , The Last King of Scotland

Nadine Gordimer, None To Accompany Me

Abdulrazak Gurnah , Paradise

H. Rider Haggard, She

Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

V.S. Naipaul, In a Free State

Ben Okri, The Famished Road

Wole Soyinka, The Season of Anomie

US novelist and non-fiction writer (born 1941)

Some of Theroux's most enjoyable books are about travelling: The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, The Kingdom by the Sea, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Happy Isles of Oceania, The Pillars of Hercules and Dark Star Safari. In all of them the narrator, the writer himself, feels detached, an observer of events rather than a participant - and the same is true of the people in Theroux's novels. They live abroad, often in the tropics; like the heroes of Graham Greene (the author Theroux most resembles) they feel uneasy both about the society they are in and about themselves; they fail to cope. The hero of Saint Jack (1973), a US pimp in Singapore, hopes to make a fortune providing rest and relaxation for his servicemen compatriots, but the pliability of his character makes him the prey for every con-man and shark in town. In The Mosquito Coast (1981) an ordinary US citizen, depressed by life, uproots his family and tries to make a new start in the Honduran jungle, with tragic, farcical results. Picture Palace (1978) is the life-story of a famous photographer who has hidden all her life behind her camera, reduced existence to images on film, and now, in withered old age, agonisingly contrasts her memories of youth, warmth and affection with the dusty prints which are all she has to show for them.Honolulu Hotel (2001) is an episodic novel set in a rundown hotel in Hawaii. The manager is an unsuccessful writer, battling with the personal demons that beset so many of Theroux’s charac- ters, who acts as witness to the tragi-comedies and mini-dramas that unfold in the seedy rooms of the hotel.

MY SECRET HISTORY  (1989) André Parent is an American writer, born at the time of the second world war, randy for women and hot for every experience the world can offer. He teaches in Africa, writes novels and stories, makes a fortune from a travel book. He fulfils his adolescent ambition, to fuck the world', only to find that he has lost moral identity. The book is wry, funny, and no comfort to Americans, intellectuals, writers, the middle-aged, or indeed anyone else at all.

Theroux’s other novels include Waldo, The Family Arsenal, Doctor Slaughter, Chicago Loop, Millroy the Magician, an acid science fiction fantasy O-Zone, My Other Life (a kind of companion to My Secret History), Kowloon Tong, The Stranger at the Palazzo d’Oro and Blinding Light. Sinning With Annie, The Consul’s File and The London Embassy are collections of short stories. Fresh Air Fiends is a collection of travel essays; Sir Vidia’s Shadow is a memoir of Theroux’s 30-year friendship (now ended) with V.S. Naipaul, horribly compelling in its revelations of the insecurities and jealousies of the literary life.

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To My Secret History : John Fowles, Daniel Martin Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul

To Theroux's novels in general : William Boyd, Stars and Bars Timothy Mo, Sour-Sweet P.H. Newby, Leaning in the Wind

To the travel books : Jonathan Raban, Coasting Colin Thubron, Behind the Wall V.S. Naipaul, Among the Believers

To O-Zone : Robie Macauley, A Secret History of Time to Come

To the short stories : Lawrence Durrell, Antrobus Complete

British novelist (1952-2001)

Adams began his career as a radio joke-writer, and also worked for the TV sf series Doctor Who. He made his name with a series of genial sf spoofs, beginning with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY  (1979) Earthman Arthur Dent, informed that his planet is about to be vapourised to make room for a hyperspace bypass, escapes by stowing away on an alien spacecraft. This is the beginning of a wild journey through time and space, in the course of which he meets the supercool President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox, discusses the coastline of Norway with Slartibartfast (who won prizes for designing it), watches the apocalyptic floor-show in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and discovers the answer to the 'ultimate question about life, the universe and everything'. Adams hinself is on a spree, spray-painting the stuffiest corners of the genre.

The other Hitchhiker books (self-contained sequels) are The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe and Everything; So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish; Mostly Harmless. In 1987 Adams began a second series, this time starring Dirk Gently, an intergalactic private eye who has to cope not only with the usual quota of blondes and hoodlums, but with electronic monks, thinking horses, the space-time continuum and an uneasy feeling that he is no more than a bystander in his own bad dreams. The Gently books so far (appropriately, a gentler entertainment than the Hitchhiker series) are Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. In his later years Adams largely turned away from the printed page to concentrate on projects in other media but the Hitchhiker books remain as the most inspired of all science fiction spoofs.

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SF spoofs in similarly lunatic vein : Robert Asprin, Phules Company Harry Harrison, The Stainless Steel Rat Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

NSF booka featuring bewildered heroes at the centre of the chaos : Patrick Dennis, Auntie Mame Charles Webb, The Graduate William Boyd, Stars and Bars Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fail

Fantasy spoofs : Robert Asprin, Another Fine Myth Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic Robert Rankin , The Anti-Pope (and others in the Brentford series) Jasper Fforde , The Eyre Affair