Philip Hensher

A lost masterpiece?

These long anticipated literary mysteries never end in anything very significant — one thinks of Harold Brodkey’s The Runaway Soul, falling totally flat after decades of sycophantic pre-publicity, or Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers, emerging in fragments in 1975, after 17 years of non-work, to scandal but no acclaim.

  • The Original of Laura

    Vladimir Nabokov

    Penguin, pp. 304

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