Ernest Bramah's China, then, is the fantastic bogus China of convention, not the real historical thing at all. He wrote of it in a prose so perfectly conceived that it becomes a miracle of style. As Hilaire Belloc once observed, the sly humor and philosophy of Bramah's stories is a trick he achieves by pretending to adapt the flavor of Chinese literary conventions into the English. But the thing I love most about the tales is their irony and the brilliance of their wit.

'When an alluring woman comes in at the door,' warningly traced the austere Kien-fi on the margin of his well-known essay, 'discretion may be found up the chim…

Bramah's books fall into two very unequal categories. Some, fortunately the smaller part, record the adventures of the blind detective, Max Carrados. These are…

Better a dish of husks to the accompaniment of a muted lute than to be satiated with stewed shark's fin and rich spiced wine of which the cost is frequently me…

'I'm an owl; you're another. Sir Critic, good day.' And the barber kept on shaving.

Dr. Kettle was wont to say that Seneca writes as a Boare does pisse, scilicet by jirkes.

Bolano's narrative style is fragmented and loaded. It is also full of a strange kind of gallows humour, as we are swept along by stories that are invented and …