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On the track of a mysterious recluse: Maxwell’s Demon, by Steven Hall, reviewed

13 February 2021

9:00 AM

13 February 2021

9:00 AM

Maxwell’s Demon Steven Hall

Canongate, pp.352, 16.99

This is not the age of experimental fiction — it’s Franzen’s, not Foster Wallace’s. That shift was on its cusp in 2007, when the critic James Wood had declared in favour of realism, and Steven Hall published his debut, The Raw Shark Texts. It was a British metafictional novel that created a big splash.

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