c o n t e n t s f e b r ua r y 2 0 1 2 • i s s u e 3 9 5

Editor Nancy Sladek Deputy Editor Tom Fleming Editor-at-Large Jeremy Lewis Senior Editor Jonathan Beckman Editorial Assistants Frank Brinkley • Tom Williams Contributing Editors Michael Burleigh Sara Wheeler • Philip Womack Advertising Manager Terry Finnegan Classified Advertising David Sturge Founding Father Auberon Waugh Cover Illustration Chris Riddell

The Literary Review, incorporating Quarto, is published monthly from: 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW • Tel: 020 7437 9392 Fax: 020 7734 1844 • ISSN 0144 4360 © All subscription enquiries and changes of address to: Literary Review Subscriptions, FREEPOST RSJB-SUGY-ZKRA, Impakt MMD Ltd, 3-4 Pylon Way, Croydon CR0 4XX • Tel: 020 8683 7151 All advertising enquiries to: Terry Finnegan, Literary Review, 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW • Tel: 020 7437 9392 Printed in the United Kingdom by: Henry Ling Ltd, at the Dorset Press, Dorchester DT1 1HD • Tel: 01305 251 066 Distributed to newsagents worldwide by: COMAG Specialist, Tavistock Works, Tavistock Rd, West Drayton, Middlesex, UB7 7QX • Tel: 01895 433 800 Distributed to bookshops by: Central Books, 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN • Tel: 020 8986 4854 Subscriptions: theliteraryreview@warnes.co.uk Editorial: editorial@literaryreview.co.uk www.literaryreview.co.uk • @lit_review Designed by Cog Design Literary Review is set in Adobe Caslon and Janet. The latter is a digitisation of an engraved typeface designed by the artist and typographer Reynolds Stone, and named after his wife.

Literary Review | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 2

f r om the p u l p i t 1 Nick Cohen l i t e r a r y l i v e s 5 Daniel Johnson

Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters (Ed) Michael Hofmann 7 Kevin Jackson

Night Thoughts: The Surreal Life of the Poet David Gascoyne Robert Fraser 8 Jay Parini

Alive Inside the Wreck: A Biography of Nathanael West Joe Woodward 10 Stephen Amidon

Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934–1961 Paul Hendrickson 11 D J Taylor

Amateurs in Eden: The Story of a Bohemian Marriage – Nancy and Lawrence Durrell Joanna Hodgkin 12 Catherine Peters on Dickens at 200 14 Paul Bailey

A Card from Angela Carter Susannah Clapp f or e i g n pa rts 15 Michael Burleigh

Algeria: France’s Undeclared War Martin Evans 16 Donald Rayfield

Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship Andrew Wilson 17 Jonathan Mirsky

Travels in China Roland Barthes 18 Jonathan Fenby

The Death of Mao: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Birth of the New China James Palmer 20 Oleg Gordievsky

Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia Luke Harding h i st or y 21 Paul Bew

Bloody Sunday: Truths, Lies and the Saville Inquiry Douglas Murray 22 David Pryce-Jones

Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Very British Coup Christopher de Bellaigue 24 John Gray

Thinking the Twentieth Century Tony Judt with Timothy Snyder