The author, who discovered the ‘I’ as a stage, wrote his last book in response to the great travel novels of his time. His narrator, the charming and self-deprecating Yorick, wanders like a pilgrim through a realm of temptation. He admires the grace of people, their pleasing art of speech – and yet beneath this glittering surface he senses a certain emptiness, a play of the senses that obscures the seriousness of feeling. Not infrequently, the book slips into tones that border on the indecent ...