One of the world's favorite novelists, on his own favorite novelist. Colm Toibin has written many beloved novels, for which he has won many prestigious prizes. The novels include Brooklyn and Long Island; The Magician and The Master. This last is Colm's fictional recreation of Henry James' extraordinary career-save in which he bounced back from the failure of his West End play, Guy Domville, to write, in rapid succession, several of the greatest masterpieces of 19thC fiction.

It takes confidence imaginatively to inhabit the mind and creative life of Henry James, the writer who, more than anyone before him, worked out how to inhabit his characters' minds and creative lives. Not only does Colm pull it off in The Master, he repeats the trick in many other novels, giving us characters of immense emotional and psychological depth.

Sophie and Jonty quickly realized why Colm had felt able to tackle the ultimate challenge of mind-reading Henry James. Colm, it quickly emerges, is a staggeringly astute literary critic and craft-teacher. Aspiring writers, masters of their craft, and curious readers alike will be blown away by the fluency and virtuosity of Colm's account of what he's learned from Henry James, his own development as a writer, and much more.

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