Ted Hodgkinson

In the world of Gaito Gazdanov, a Russian émigré soldier turned taxi driver who began writing fiction in the 1920s, doublings abound, though their meanings are rarely resolved. As with his great contemporary Nabokov, this hall-of-mirrors effect provides a pleasant means of exploring the fragmentary and illusory self. But it is Dostoevsky, and his novel

Paul O’Rourke, the narrator of Joshua Ferris’s third novel, is a dentist who spends his days staring into the murky recesses of his patients’ mouths. Despite encouraging them to floss, he is himself a man of curiously ingrained habits. Averse to the digital age and oddly superstitious, he stockpiles VHS recorders and watches the Boston