"In the wake of the academic triumph of reductive theory and identity politics, the student and the lover of literature naturally ask: Does literature, as a dis

Paul is a schoolboy, described as tall and thin with strange eyes. He is facing the headmaster and several of his teachers, with whom he does not have a good re

Do the arts make us better people? Why should "high" art be thought higher than "low"? In the first part of this spirited polemic, Carey returns startling answe

11 April 1982: a smell is coming down John Golding Road right alongside the boy-child, something attached to him, like a spirit but not quite. Ma Taffy is growi