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Nazis, killer dogs and weird sex: Empty Wigs, by Jonathan Meades, reviewed

Meades’s 1,000-page doorstopper is also vast in scope, containing 19 overlapping stories of a family scattered through time and space, and their role in a variety of nefarious goings-on

Keith Miller
Jonathan Meades.  David Levensen/Getty Images
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 08 March 2025
issue 08 March 2025

Jonathan Meades is, you might say, a baroque artist in a mannerist age. Whereas today’s younger and more widely feted writers think small – a Brooklyn sublet, a Camden Town love nest, the cracked mirror of the self – Meades goes big. And not just in physical terms (Empty Wigs tips the scales at nearly 3lb), but in scope.

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