Maggot

 In his prologue, John Fowles tells us that A Maggot began as a vision he had of five travellers riding with mysterious purpose through remote countryside. This image gives way to another - a hanging corpse with violets stuffed in its mouth - which leads us into a maze of beguiling paths and wrong turnings, disappearances and revelations, unaccountable motives and cryptic deeds, as this compelling mystery swerves towards a starling vision at its centre.

Review: A remarkable and brilliant work of fiction...the imaginative power of the novel is astounding, the technical virtuosity and structural daring equally so * The Times *

This altogether admirable novel serves, as all literature should, the forces of subversion. It is a worthy companion to The French Lieutenant's Woman, which does the same thing, but bolder in its experimentation and hence more notable as an artistic achievement -- Anthony Burgess * Observer *

Compelling and passionate fiction... Fowles's darting imagination skims across the landscape of two and a half centuries * Times Literary Supplement *

Brilliant and compelling...he deploys his usual seductive narrative gifts to great effect * Guardian *