Ian Sansom

Hilary Mantel, Zadie Smith and Salman Rushdie are cut down to size

Like a weary schoolmaster toiling over his pupils’ homework, Peter Kemp dispenses praise, encouragement or reproof to modern fiction’s big-hitters

Zadie Smith tends to meander ‘as her whimsy takes her’, according to Peter Kemp. [Getty Images]
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  • Retroland: A Reader’s Guide to the Dazzling Diversity of Modern Fiction

    Peter Kemp

    Yale University Press, pp. 320, £20

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