Sam Leith Sam Leith

Names to conjure with

Sebastian Faulks’s latest book, examining the great characters of British fiction, may be scorned by the literary establishment, but Sam Leith salutes its enthusiasm and humour

issue 05 February 2011

Golly gee. Academic literary critics are going to hate Faulks on Fiction like sin. Here is Sebastian three-for-two Faulks, if you please, clumping onto their turf with a book of reflections on a couple of dozen great novels. And he declares in his introduction, with some pride, that he intends to take ‘an unfashionable approach’ and examine characters in these books ‘as though they were real people’.

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