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

It is very possible that Peter Kemp is the best-read man in Britain. Certainly, as the Sunday Times’s chief literary critic for goodness knows how many years, he has read and opined upon more works of new fiction than most. His is either a dream job or an absolute nightmare, depending on how you feel about the state of the novel. A Sisphyean task? A Herculean labour? Or just a colossal waste of time? All those keen debuts, all that second-rate dross, all those egos demanding attention: Kemp has bravely buckled up, knuckled down and dutifully banged out 800-plus words, week in, week out, for longer than most of us have been able to tell the difference between a roman-fleuve and a roman-à-clef. Retroland is an intriguing compilation of his unstinting efforts, shaped into a kind of argument.

The argument, in summary, is that fiction in English since the 1970s has displayed ‘a widespread and diverse enthralment with the past’.