The book as narrator: The Pages, by Hugo Hamilton, reviewed

Rescued from the Nazi book-burning, a copy of Joseph Roth’s novel Rebellion describes its readers and the events it witnesses

From magazine issue: 31 July 2021

Joseph Roth, a copy of whose book, Rebellion, is the narrator of Hugo Hamilton’s novel. [Alamy]

issue 31 July 2021

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Michael Arditti

The book as narrator: The Pages, by Hugo Hamilton, reviewed
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It is a truism that a book needs readers in order to have a meaningful existence. Hugo Hamilton’s The Pages both develops and inverts that relationship. It not only tells a story to its readers; it tells the story of its readers. To paraphrase its own words, it accumulates their inner lives.