The blank on the map

‘Is Geoff Dyer someone on your radar?’ inquired the courtly literary editor, inviting me to review this book. What a question! Envy is the writer’s sin, as everyone knows, and to a nonagenarian writer of my kind the very conception of Geoff Dyer, aged 57 and perhaps the most brilliantly original practitioner of his generation, figures green and large on any screen. Has he not won countless awards around the world? Has his work not been published, his publicists say, in more than 20 languages?

More than 20? More than 20! And White Sands, an elegant parade of his talents, tells me why. It is not quite like any other book, and frankly says so. Physically it is a lovely object, spare, clean, modernist, sans jacket, with an enigmatic sprinkling of illustrations and photographic endpapers showing Dyer walking thoughtfully into some sort of wet, sandy and rocky wilderness. It looks fascinating, and so, I can cautiously say for a start, are its contents.