A fine description of Mervyn Peake’s balance between bounding imagination and taut writing, rounded off with a vintage metaphor.

‘It remains essentially a work of the closed imagination, in which a world parallel to our own is presented in almost paranoiac denseness of detail.  But the madness is illusory, and control never falters.  It is, if you like, a rich wine of fancy chilled by the intellect to just the right temperature.’

See also our bestellar review of this book, with its lavishly illustrated quote-mosaic, packed with fine phrasing and fresh metaphors.  

Source: Anthony Burgess, introduction to Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan (London: Vintage Books, 1998), p. 5

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