This South African writer's tenth novel could be put (admittedly, by me) in the same novelistic compartment as Albert Camus' The Outsider, and most of the work of French writer Michel Houellebecq , with it's bleak outlook, friendless artist of a protagonist, and unfulfilling modern society.

John is described in the third person, just one of the techniques utilised to emphasise his loneliness. Moving from politically volatile 1950s South Africa to London, he is a white 'colonial' with a chip on his shoulder. He is also a poet who is unable to realise his dream of being published, because of a lack of inspiration, helped along by the fact that he is unable to engage in intimate, or even friendly relationships without analysing and deconstructing the situation until he alienates his companions.

Although John is a tiresome and depressing character, his observations about modern life are as relevant to today's society as they are to post-war London. After passing a number of days without speaking to anyone, he begins to mark each day with an S in his diary for silence: 

"Ouside the underground station he bumps by mistake against a little old man selling newspapers. 'Sorry!' he says. 'Watch where you're going!' snarls the man.

Sorry: the word comes heavily out of his mouth, like a stone. Does a single word of indeterminate class count as speech? Has what occurred between himself and the old man been an instance of human contact, or is it better described as mere social interaction, like a touching of feelers between ants…The memory of that single word will persist for weeks perhaps for the rest of his life" page 114

I think I would have loved this book as a depressed adolescent, but I just can't feel empathy, or even sympathy for this character. I know he is depressed and alienated, but his, admittedly well-described, self-indulgence tends to grate, and you wish he would just move back to Cape Town and stop moping about.

South African map courtesy of Wikipedia