Sarah Ditum

Claire Messud helps us see the familiar with new eyes

Her essays on writers such as Ishiguro, Camus and Jane Bowles make returning to their works a renewed pleasure

Claire Messud. Credit: Getty Images
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  • Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write: An Autobiography Through Essays

    Claire Messud

    Fleet, pp. 256, £14

The title of this collection of journalism is a problem. Not the Kant’s Little Prussian Head bit, which, though opaque, is explained in the text. It’s from Thomas Bernhard’s novel The Loser and is quoted by Claire Messud in the title essay: ‘We study a monumental work, for example Kant’s work, and in time it shrivels down to Kant’s little East Prussian head.’

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