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Lead book review

Paul Johnson on Henry Kissinger, Susan Hill on David Walliams, Julie Burchill on Julie Burchill: Spectator books of the year

<span style="color: #222222;">Plus choices from Mark Amory, A.N. Wilson, Thomas W. Hodgkinson, Roger Lewis, Jonathan Mirsky, Jeremy Clarke, Stephen Walsh, Ferdinand Mount, Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Wynn Wheldon, Stephen Bayley, Jonathan Rugman, Alan Judd, Patrick Marnham, Richard Davenport-Hines, Michela Wrong, Byron Rogers, Sofka Zinovieff and Andrew Taylor</span>

15 November 2014

9:00 AM

15 November 2014

9:00 AM

Mark Amory

Being a slow reader, I first try the shortest, or anyway shorter, works of famous novelists unknown to me. This year, with many misgivings, I read The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil (Penguin, £8.99) and was shocked and impressed by the intensity of the sex and violence he describes at a military boarding school in Austria.

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To be continued next week.

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