Andrew McKie

Time is of the essence | 20 October 2016

Time is of the essence in his new novel — the way it escapes, encompasses and shapes us. The Gradual is an extraordinary achievement, and we should all find the time to read it

issue 22 October 2016

Christopher Priest, now 73, has been quietly turning out oddly mesmerising fiction for nearly half a century but, like the protagonists of his 2005 novel The Glamour, somehow has the knack of never quite being noticed.

It is true that he has devoted admirers; he has won awards; he was on Granta’s original list of best young novelists — scraping in on age, not quality — and Christopher Nolan filmed, cleverly, his even cleverer novel The Prestige (1995), which was about Victorian illusionists and duplicity.

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