Jamie Collinson

On the track of a mysterious recluse: Maxwell’s Demon, by Steven Hall, reviewed

Hall’s experimental novel, combining the plot of a thriller with discourses on entropy, is an oddly enjoyable read

Steven Hall. Credit: Katherine McKenzie 
issue 13 February 2021

This is not the age of experimental fiction — it’s Franzen’s, not Foster Wallace’s. That shift was on its cusp in 2007, when the critic James Wood had declared in favour of realism, and Steven Hall published his debut, The Raw Shark Texts. It was a British metafictional novel that created a big splash.

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