Joseph Zizza

My first Powys book and a real shock it was. He goes into such tremendous depth about the characters thoughts and feelings that I was reminded of Proust. He finds significance in the apparently trivial and transmits his fascination with the universe, nature, people and just about everything else. The plot, such as it is, is the story of a young man, Wolf Solent, returning to his roots in Dorset after ten years in London, but it is about all the major themes: life and death, good and evil, reality and appearance, and so on and so on. A longish book first published in 1929, it is one of my favourites, and I am forever grateful to my friend Michael for introducing me to Powys.