Written in the anecdotal style, it's like a chattering intelligence washing over you. It's funny and subtle, so you are off guard and then the insights appear, the human condition opens. The reader thinks they're in a comedy, then finds themselves revising their references of right and wrong and melting the glue of established society.

There's a sort of anarchic Frodo and Sam Gangee relationship between the main characters. At the start you think Raffles (like Frodo) is the hero and by the end the illusion burns away in the light of day and your view of what a man should be flips until you respect the one you are invited to believe is a bumbling idiot (the steadfast Sam or Bunny). The lesson is that strength in the long term, reliability, is a different thing to the attraction of fleeting glamour. Raffles is a flawed friend, a fascination. The Great Wall topples and we see it as a stage set, thinned and held up by just so many ploys and props.

Has this book been published uncorrected or is that another tactic to lure us in?

There's guile to this book. Words of tragic intelligence spill from the mouth of an amusing, mystified fool. A flow of consciousness that gives us hope and a growing fright at the same time. Are there people out there who really think like this? What if everyone used these ploys? Could we survive as a society?

This is the brightest book I've read in a couple of years, since one of Rushdie's. I wouldn't have known about it if I hadn't been told. It's not so much a case of read this and it will freak you out, but read this and it will surprise you. I laughed, at first, then I had to spend a while pondering the infinite. Jokes and philosophy are a dangerous combination!

James White