Biographer's Tale A.S. Byatt

Phineas G. Nanson, a disenchanted graduate student, decides to immerse himself in the messiness of 'real life' by writing a biography of a great biographer. But a 'whole life' is hard to find. Everywhere he looks he discovers only fragments - strange notes, boxes of marbles, undated postcards.

As Phineas's research continues, his mind roams from the deserts of Africa to the maelstroms of the Arctic. Along the way he meets others building wholes from bits and pieces - taxonomists, ecologists, even travel agents - and begins to puzzle out his future. But who will guide him from the labyrinth and back into his own life?

Review: "This novel takes the reader somewhere rare and high" Financial Times "A voluptuous tale" Sunday Times "Awesome" Daily Mail "The relation of language to things, the arrangement of those things in the world, and exposure of the tricks of literary composition are not just occasional intruders in this novel, they are its very subject" Times Literary Review